


The Ghost of Embers

by Moorishflower



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-19
Updated: 2010-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:28:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester's life has been one big clusterfuck. He lost his mother to a house fire when he was a child, and he lost his father to an explosive car accident when he was a teen, and, now that he's a full-grown man, he's losing his brother to college and to distant, sunny California. Dean, determined not to let his pyrophobia or his anxiety over his absent brother ruin him, and desirous of a change that just might fix everything, makes the rashest move of his adult life: a largely unnecessary, almost entirely unplanned move to New York City. Stuck in the middle of a city that has a reputation for chewing up and spitting out the unprepared, Dean's anxieties fluctuate between bad and worse...until he starts to get to know his mysterious and antisocial next door neighbor, Castiel. But mystery isn't always a good thing; Castiel is hiding a secret...a secret that the cynical Dean Winchester might have trouble believing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Most of Dean Winchester’s life has been consumed by fire.

When he was four, he lost his mother in an accident. A house fire. Well, Dean tells people it was an accident. He doesn’t tell people that it was arson, that the man who had set their house on fire had known his mother since she was a kid. Doesn’t tell people that the guy had basically been stalking her since high school, getting crazier and crazier with every passing year.

He definitely doesn’t tell people that the guy had snuck into the house first, had stabbed Mary Winchester in the stomach and had almost done the same to Dean’s infant brother, Sam.

And then there are other things he doesn’t talk about at all. Like how he dropped out of high school at sixteen because he kept _seeing_ things – sparks and bright flashes out of the corner of his eye, far too similar to the lick of flames for his comfort – and it had kept him from concentrating. Had, in fact, almost led to him having a total _breakdown_ on several occasions. He doesn’t talk about how him nixing any chance at higher education he might have had pissed Sammy off so much that they essentially stopped talking to each other for a year. He doesn’t talk about the deeper issues beneath _that_ \- that seeing Sam occasionally reminds Dean of the night he lost his mother, a night that Sam doesn’t remember, can’t even comprehend, because he was too young. Practically just born.

He doesn’t talk about how his father was basically gone by the time he’d turned twenty, only occasionally dropping by in order to make sure he and his brother were alive, leaving him to take care of Sam by himself.

How John Winchester had gotten into a car accident not even three years later. Dead on impact. The entire car had gone up in flames. How, when he had been asked to identify the body, Dean had thrown up, and had needed to spend an hour in a small room, calming himself down, while an uncomfortable-looking cop had repeatedly tried to offer him shitty coffee.

So yeah, Dean’s life is…less than ideal. His brother simultaneously loves and resents him, his parents are dead, he has recurring dreams about twisted and snarling creatures tying him up and covering him with gasoline, and he occasionally panics because he sees fires that aren’t really there.

Life still finds ways to get worse.

~

“You’re _what_?”

On the other end of the line, Sam takes a deep breath. Dean wonders what he was doing, before he decided to call his big brother and pretty much ruin his life. Was he eating? Probably not, there isn’t anything in the house _to_ eat aside from bread and lunchmeat and a few microwave dinners. Maybe doing his laundry. Sam does his laundry way more often than any sane person would.

“No personal calls on the clock,” the foreman calls out, and Dean resists the urge to give the guy the finger. Construction isn’t the safest job, and most days he has to spend his break focusing on his breathing and struggling not to panic, but, in the past nine months, he’s managed to bring in enough money that Sam can continue going to school _and_ they can keep a roof over their heads. He isn’t going to let his stupid fucking panic attacks get in the way of his brother making something of himself.

“I’m leaving,” Sam says, after a long silence. A pause, and then (like he needs to fucking _clarify_ ), “I’m moving to California.”

“Sam,” Dean says, “if this is about me… _freaking out_ because you used the stove the other day…”

“It’s not that,” Sam says immediately. Another pause. “It’s just…everything, Dean. And Ruby says…”

“Yeah, Ruby says _what_ ,” Dean mutters. “She’s a fucking _tweaker_ , Sam, you shouldn’t trust _anything_ she says. Not to mention you met her on the goddamn _internet_.”

“She’s been clean for three months,” Sam says quietly. “And she’s been going to therapy. Which is more than…” He cuts himself off abruptly, but Dean doesn’t need to hear the words to know what they are.

“More than I can say for myself,” he says. “Thanks, Sammy, for that _awe-inspiring_ display of confidence in me.”

“Dean, I just…I want to actually _do_ something with my life! And I’ve already done all the paperwork, I’ve already…Stanford’s one of the best law schools in the country, and I’ve been offered a full ride, Dean. I’ve got some money saved up, you won’t even have to help me pay for plane tickets…”

“What, University of Kansas isn’t good enough? You can’t get your fancy law degree here in Lawrence?”

“Dean, _please_ ,” Sam says. “Just…let me do this. For once in my life, just…let me be my own person.”

“Winchester!” the foreman shouts. “Either hang up the phone or leave!”

“We’ll talk about this when I get home,” Dean says.

“No,” Sam murmurs. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Dean hangs up. He stares at his cell phone for a long time, hand clenched into a fist at his side. Sam is leaving. Sam is leaving and the insinuation is that it’s because of _Dean_. Because Dean wasn’t smart enough to get the hell out of Kansas while they still had the money, or because Dean is so fucked up in the head that Sam just can’t stand living with him anymore. Hates it enough, in fact, to move all the way across the fucking country.

Dean shoves his phone down into his pocket, and takes a deep breath. Another. Another. His vision’s starting to blur – not a good sign. He needs to get someplace where he can just…sit, for a while. Sit and not think.

It’s too hot. Dean squints until his eyes are very nearly shut, because sometimes that helps – it doesn’t keep him from feeling like he’s about to combust, but there have been times where it _has_ kept him from breaking down because he thought he saw a spike of flames out of the corner of his eye. He fumbles his way towards the break area, drops heavily down onto one of the benches and then buries his face in his cupped palms. He can hear the foreman shouting, but it’s difficult to make out the words through the blood rushing in his ears.

 _Maybe Sam has the right idea,_ some small part of him whispers. _Maybe it’s time to leave Lawrence. There’s nothing but bad memories, here._

Yeah, Dean doesn’t want to think…but, usually, he ends up thinking anyways.

“Dean?”

It’s Ash. Ash is quite possibly the only person on the team that gives a damn about him – he’s fixed Sam’s laptop more than once (first for a faulty hard drive, recovering about ninety percent of Sam’s data for forty bucks and a six-pack of PBR, and then again when Sam accidentally spilled soda all over the keyboard), and occasionally he manages to convince Dean to go out drinking with him, instead of just locking himself in his shitty apartment and nursing the cheapest bottle of whiskey he can find. Ash is a good friend. Dean cautiously opens his eyes, peering at Ash through the cracks in his fingers.

“Dude,” Ash says, “you really need to see someone about this. It’s getting worse.”

“It isn’t,” Dean insists. It’s a lie. He knows it, and Ash knows it, too, but neither of them is going to admit to it first.

“Whatever,” Ash says. “You should at least see about getting some…fuck, I dunno. Some of those anti-anxiety pills.”

“Yeah, because I’ve got the money to waste on pills I don’t need,” Dean mutters. Even the health insurance that the Harvelle Construction Group provides him with wouldn’t be enough – not with him paying for Sam’s tuition, for all his books, as well as paying for food and rent.

Although he guesses that won’t be as much of a problem, now.

“Look,” Ash says quietly. “I know you don’t need ‘em, Dean, but I know a guy who pops Xanax like fuckin’ Pez. I can ask him if he’ll give some up, you know, just in case. There’s no shame in it, man. My cousin’s on medication.”

“Your cousin thinks that she can talk to bears,” Dean says dryly. “I’m pretty sure you told me that she’s been banned from at _least_ four different zoos.”

“Yeah, but she’s still on medication.”

“Look,” Dean says, “I appreciate it, I really do, but I don’t need pills, and I don’t need therapy. I’m _fine_.” He can barely use a stove without spending an hour mentally preparing himself for it, but he’s…fine.

“Maybe you just need a change of pace,” Ash suggests. “Like, a new hobby or something. Or maybe take a vacation.”

“Like I have enough time for a vacation,” Dean scoffs.

But, six hours later, he still can’t stop thinking about it. What if a change of scenery is exactly what he needs?

~

“You’re having a mid-life crisis,” is what Sam says, immediately, upon hearing Dean’s (admittedly tentative) plan. “Oh god, I’m the one who brought it on, aren’t I? Look, Dean, you can’t follow me all the way to California, it would be weird and uncomfortable for everyone involved, and…”

“And if you’d let me finish a thought, I’d tell you that I’m thinking about New York,” Dean says mildly. “But, you know. Go ahead, keep going.”

Sam opens his mouth, and then closes it abruptly, teeth clicking. He looks like someone just ran up to him and slapped him. Dean reaches for another slice of pizza, humming softly. He’s…he’s doing better, much better, than he was earlier. The drive home wasn’t punctuated with the need to pull into any parking lots, and he even managed to listen to the radio without worrying that the wires would somehow break, and set the engine aflame. Dean’s taking it as a sign that this is the right decision. He sort of _has_ to. Otherwise he’ll just be…

 _Lost. Hurt. Terrified._

…angry that Sam apparently made all his plans to leave without telling Dean, first.

“New York,” Sam repeats faintly. “That’s just…Dean, New York is _huge_.”

“It is,” Dean agrees. That’s part of the beauty of New York – it’s large enough that he’ll be able to find a job (even if the rent is a bit more expensive than he’s used to), and he won’t have to run into any people he knows. No Ellen looking at him sympathetically on her weekly inspections of the crew, no Jo throwing him cautiously flirtatious one-liners…No Ash, either, but Ash does the whole email thing, so Dean figures he can probably figure it out, if he has to.

And no Sam.

Dean will be on his own.

He keeps telling himself that that’s a good thing. That even if Sam _is_ going to live with a chick who’s both a Satanist (Dean isn’t exactly particularly religious, but still, kind of weird) and a former meth-addict (and Dean uses the word "former" very hesitantly), he’ll at least be getting the best fucking education free government money can buy. And California is big, too. Sam’s young, good-looking, he works hard. He’ll be able to get a job wherever he wants. Dean doesn’t have any reason to worry, apart from the whole Ruby thing.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Sam sighs. “Dean, you’re…you’ve got _issues_. Ones that you’ve been refusing to deal with for the past _twenty-three years_. What makes you think that you can live in New York and _not_ be eaten alive?”

“What makes you think I can’t?” Dean throws back, angrier than he should be, considering that Sam is…is _worried_ about him. But Dean’s so sick of this patronizing bullshit, and Sam _always_ tries to pull it with him.

“I’m just saying, you won’t even see a therapist…”

“Because I don’t need a goddamn therapist, Sammy! I took care of you, didn’t I? Since we were _kids_ , I took care of you! I made sure you got enough to eat, I got you new clothes when your old ones wore out, I did _everything_ that dad should have done! Is that the sort of thing a crazy person could do? Huh?”

Sam rocks back on his heels, looking stricken. Dean shoves the rest of his pizza crust into his mouth. He chews and tries not to think about how Sam is _looking_ at him. Like he’s a little bit sad, a little bit angry, a little bit ashamed, all at once.

“Fine,” Sam says. His mouth is pursed into an uncomfortable-looking moue of discontent, and he reaches for his own slice of pizza with the air of a man who would rather be doing anything - would rather be _anywhere_ \- else. He holds his pizza like he’s afraid the thing is going to attack him – Dean isn’t sure why, especially considering he went out of his way to order an everything pizza, just so Sam would have some peppers and onions with his grease and meat.

 _I’m still making sure that he eats his vegetables,_ Dean realizes. _He’s twenty-three and he’s going to be a junior in college and I’m still taking care of him._

“Sam,” he says, and then pauses, swallowing down a thin note of panic. Sam looks at him expectantly; Dean makes a conscious effort not to pay attention to the flickering out of the corner of his eye. In fact, he _closes_ his eyes, just for a moment, and that makes him feel a little bit better, even if he can sort of sense Sam leaning a bit closer. Just in case he freaks out, he guesses.

“I’m not happy about this,” he says quietly.

“I figured.”

Dean holds up a hand, eyes still closed. “Hear me out. I don’t trust Ruby. And I think you’ve made enough stupid mistakes before that you’re probably going to _keep_ making them. _But_ …you aren’t my kid brother anymore. I mean, legally, you can smoke, drink, and screw just about whatever you like…”

“Way to put it in the least flattering terms possible,” Sam says, nose wrinkling. Dean laughs, because Sam’s seen the worst of him, has seen Dean panicking over the smallest, stupidest things (like stovetops, and lighters, and microwaves), has seen him come home slurring drunk, and has probably walked in on him having sex with at _least_ four different people (at least, those are the times that Dean remembers actually noticing Sam), and yet it’s still _language_ that offends Sam the most. Fucking _words_.

“I’m trying to have a serious conversation here,” Dean protests, and Sam bows his head, his stupid floppy hair falling about his face.

“I hear you, Dean,” he murmurs. “That…it means a lot to me. Seriously, thanks.”

“Don’t make a huge deal out of it,” Dean warns. “All I’m saying is that you’re a grown dude and I can’t stop you. If you want to…to move to California to live with your Satanist girlfriend, then that’s your decision.” He opens his eyes completely and levels Sam with a severe look, the kind that only older siblings and moms are really capable of pulling off. “But if you think for one second that I’m gonna feel _any_ sympathy when she eventually fucks you over, then you’re out of your mind.”

“Point taken,” Sam says dryly. He doesn’t exactly look pleased with that, but Sam underestimates precisely how _much_ Dean hates Ruby. How much he hates her for taking his little brother away from him, for saying things like "you could be so much better than your brother" and "maybe it’s time you thought about getting a life of your own, stop letting Dean leech off of you". Both of which, by the way, are things that Dean has actually _heard_ her say. Skype’s a bitch when you’ve got an older brother with excellent hearing in the next room.

“So,” Sam continues, “where does this leave us? I mean, are we…?”

“We’re whatever,” Dean says. He holds up his hand when Sam’s mouth flaps open again, threatening to spew empowering bullshit about embracing their feelings and accepting their inner selves. “No chick flick moments, Samantha, not while you’re still under my roof.”

“Jerk,” Sam says, mouth turning up into a smile that’s a little bit wistful.

“Bitch,” Dean says, and then snags the last piece of pizza before Sam can protest. He feels…well, he’d be lying if he said he felt "good", because there’s still the continuous threat of the stove (and the toaster, and the microwave…), not to mention everything that can go wrong _outside_ , but Dean is feeling confident, if nothing else. He can do this. He can let Sam go _and_ he can move to an entirely different city, and he isn’t going to let it get to him. He isn’t going to let himself be consumed by bitterness at the thought of Sam ‘moving on’.

Everything is going to be fine.

~

Two months later, and Dean’s revising that opinion.

It only takes Sam one month to get himself packed up and ready – just in time for him to enroll as a full-time student at Stanford University. As promised, he doesn’t let Dean help him with the plane tickets, doesn’t let him put anything towards textbooks, and Sam doesn’t even dip into their meager inheritance (something that Dean avoids like the plague, because having a bit of money set aside is always comforting). He does it all by himself, and if Dean had needed proof that his little brother was no longer quite so little, then he got it, and then some.

Dean drives Sam to Kansas City, only needing to pull over into a rest stop once (considering it’s a forty minute drive, that’s pretty impressive), and he punches him in the shoulder as Sam’s gate starts to board.

“You’ll be okay, Dean,” Sam tells him before he leaves. “Everything will work out.”

Dean doesn’t have the heart to tell Sam that _he’s_ the one who should be saying that, and, either way, it would probably still be wrong. He watches Sam’s plane take off through the huge windows near the waiting area, and then drives himself back home to Lawrence. He has to stop six times in order to calm himself down and, the next day, he calls Ash and asks if his friend is still popping Xanax like Pez.

Which, in turn, has led to this: Dean, sitting with his own luggage at gate seventy-seven, waiting for his flight to board and quietly counting to ten, over and over, in order to stave off the inevitable panic attack.

 _I’ve got nothing to worry about,_ he tells himself – Ash knows a guy who knows a guy in New York, and Dean’s pretty much set as far as an apartment goes. It’s cheap, it’s centrally located, and, best of all, the neighbors are apparently "quiet" (though he isn’t sure why Ash put a fucking winking smiley face after the word). And he’s got a potential job, too. He’s not exactly proud that he needed to ask his boss’s daughter (his boss’s daughter, who has a fucking _crush_ on him) whether she knew of any companies looking to hire in the New York, New York area, but it’s not like the economy is particularly kind these days, and Dean _needs_ to have a job waiting for him. Or at least the possibility of a job.

He rolls the bottle of aspirin that Ash gave him between his palms. Of course, it isn’t full of aspirin, but rather about a year’s worth of Xanax, if he uses it sparingly. And Dean doesn’t plan on popping pills like Ash’s friend…just using them when it counts.

Like now.

He thumbs the cap off the bottle and pours out one of the small, yellowish pills. Should he take half? He has no idea how strong it is, or even whether it will affect him at all.

He glances out the window at the runway, and decides that yeah, combining his fear of flying with his already ridiculous fear of things catching on fire warrants the use of a whole pill. He puts the cap back on the bottle and then tips the tiny pill into his mouth, swallowing. It sticks in his throat for a moment, awkward, and Dean shudders. He knows that, if he thinks about it too much, it won’t take very long for him to convince himself that planes are death traps at the best of times, and this one is going to be cruising along at thirty-one thousand feet where there isn’t going to be any help, and the best he’ll be able to hope for is a quick death by drowning if they happen to be flying over an ocean, otherwise he’ll be burning up along with the jet fuel…god, jet fuel burns at a temperature of, what? Two thousand degrees? It would only take twenty, thirty seconds and there’d be nothing left of him but a smear of grease and charred bones, and…

And his hands are shaking. Dean takes a deep breath, his vision blurred and narrow. He takes another, and another. Shit. The plane’s bad enough on its own – why did he think it was a good idea to _fly_ to New York?

 _Because driving would take too long,_ he reminds himself. _You’d have a nervous breakdown while you were on the highway and you’d crash into a semi or something. The plane is not being flown by a guy who’s terrified of jet fuel or stoves or lighters. He’s a professional and the chances of the plane crashing are like, next to none. So get a hold of yourself and stop fucking panicking._

Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out. The woman sitting across from him looks like she’s thinking about calling the police. Or maybe the hospital. Dean makes a focused effort to slow his rapid heartbeat, thinking about…pie. Pie is a good topic. Pie that he can buy at the grocery store’s bakery for like eleven dollars. Apple pie and strawberry-rhubarb pie, and chocolate pie…Sam prefers cake, because he’s a tool and because he’s probably trying to make up for all the birthdays they couldn’t afford to celebrate when they were kids, but Dean knows that pie is where it’s at. Luxurious without being pretentious. Comforting. Pie.

 _Attention. Now boarding gate seventy-seven._

Dean feels his breathing beginning to even out, and he clutches at his carry-on duffel with the sort of desperation normally only exhibited by drowning men. He can’t tell if it’s the Xanax or the thought of pie that’s calming him down, but he’s grateful either way, and he hauls his duffel up onto his shoulder and then stands, digging around in his pocket for his plane ticket. The woman checking tickets has obviously dyed blonde hair and a hair clip shaped like a dragonfly holding back her bangs. Dean smiles at her, and she gives him a look that’s mildly interested, but mostly sympathetic. He doesn’t blame her – he probably looks like a crazy person, the way he’s clutching at his duffel, fear-sweat still clinging to his temples.

Dean follows the shuffling line of people until he actually sets foot on the plane, and the panic from before…stays mercifully gone. Pharmaceutical help or no, he’s going to take what he can get while it lasts. He finds his seat and shoves his duffel into the overhead compartment, wondering how long it will take his furniture to reach his new apartment – the U-Haul had been expensive, but he hadn’t seen any other way to get all his stuff from Kansas to New York in one go.

Dean drops into the aisle seat, sighing. There are two women sitting next to him, and they both look at him with mingled suspicion and disapproval.

Dean rests his head back against the seat.

Two and half hours to go.

~

The plane touches down almost three hours later with all the grace of a wounded water buffalo, and the only reason that Dean isn’t freaking out and hyperventilating is the fact that he can _see_ the ground, almost close enough to touch. The Xanax had helped with the first half of the flight, and he’d managed to fall asleep for most of the second half, but the last twenty minutes? Torture. Dean hauls his duffel from the overhead compartment with slightly more force than necessary, and he utterly forgets to smile at the attractive flight attendant. He just wants to have both feet safely on the ground again.

LaGuardia airport is roughly a _thousand_ times bigger than Kansas City, and Dean spends almost fifteen minutes just trying to figure out where to go and pick up his luggage. By the time he finally has his two "expandable wheeled duffels" back in his possession (fifteen percent off on Amazon, bought specifically for this occasion), he’s feeling sort of like he’s been picked up by a tornado and hurled off into Oz. The constant press and movement of the crowds is bad enough, but there’s also the noise, the smells, and, as always, the constant threat of the airport burning down around him. Logically, he knows that’s unlikely – it’s an _airport_ , it’s probably got the fire department on speed dial, just in case. But, even so, he has to hightail it to one of the benches out in front, has to sit there with his luggage and his carry-on and hold his head in his hands while he breathes and his vision threatens to narrow down to a fine pinprick of light.

His cell phone vibrates. Dean splays his fingers slightly and glares at nothing in particular. There’s a guy sitting on a similar bench a few feet away from him. He’s giving Dean a _look_. Dean feels his mouth curling in a vague sort of grimace, and the guy looks away.

Dean’s phone vibrates again. He takes one more deep breath, then pulls the cell from his pocket and flips it open.

 _2 unheard voicemails_

The first one is from Sam:

”Hey Dean, it’s Sam. Just…wanted to know how your flight went, if you’re okay, that sort of thing. California is nice. Well, I mean, you know that, I told you already, but…it’s really, really nice. Classes just started. They’re a lot more intense than I thought they would be, but they’re fun, too. I’m taking…well, a bunch of law courses, but for one of my gen eds I’m taking a course on the history of classic rock. I thought you’d get a kick out of that. Ruby’s doing great…I went with her to her CMA meeting…Um, Crystal Meth Anonymous. She’s been clean for almost seven months, now.”

A long pause. And then Sam takes a breath.

”If you ever need any help, just…call me, Dean. I know we’re on opposite sides of the country, now, but if you ever need money, or…”

Dean deletes the message. He gets where Sam is coming from (not even three weeks ago he was offering _Sam_ money, "just in case"), but he’s a grown fucking man, and he doesn’t need anyone else’s charity, least of all his little brother’s.

The second message is from Ash:

“Dean! Buddy! You touch down yet? Let me know how the, ah…herbal supplements are working out for you.”

Dean snorts so hard he thinks he might break his face. _Herbal supplements_ , Jesus Christ.

“Anyways, I called Andy, and he says that the apartment’s got an old couch you can crash on until Rufus can bring the U-Haul your way. Not exactly living in style, but any port in a storm, I guess. He also says they’ve been having a problem with bats or mice or some other pest...Stuff going bump in the walls, you know? He says he’s called an exterminator but they haven’t gotten back to him yet – fucking New York, am I right? Anyways, the apartment’s clean and he hasn’t actually seen any creepy crawlies yet, so you should be safe. But either way, you might want to invest in some traps or something, just in case.

“Oh, and Bobby Singer, the guy Jo told you about? I sent him an email and showed him a picture of that Thunderbird you fixed up for those douchebags from Philadelphia. He said he owns a side business you might be interested in, restoring old cars, asking rich dicks if they remembered to change their oil, that sort of thing. You know, if you feel like getting out of construction. The pay’s a little bit better, especially if you can work on some classics. Oh, speaking of classics, Rufus says he can bring the Impala up after he gets the U-Haul to you. A week after, maybe? Says you owe him a favor, though, after all this driving. Okay, Ellen’s shouting at me – gotta go. Gimme a jingle once you’re all settled!”

The message ends, and Dean closes his phone and shoves it back down into his pocket. He feels…a little bit better. Knowing that he won’t need to be too long without his car helps – it’ll probably take Rufus two or three days to drive up to New York, so a week, two weeks? He can survive that. Especially considering that Rufus was generous enough to rent the U-Haul in his name.

There’s a line of taxis waiting for customers in the parking lot. Every so often a harried-looking man, woman, or family will flag one down, load all their shit into the trunk, and then drive off. Dean sees a lot of guys in business suits carrying briefcases, but not a lot of people like him – jeans, Zeppelin t-shirt, boots. He feels vaguely out of place, but he can’t let himself dwell on it. That way lies madness.

He hauls himself up off the bench, making sure that all of his luggage is accounted for before heading for the taxis. He snags one that’s empty and waves off the cabbie’s attempt to help him load his duffels into the trunk. He’s probably still a little pale, maybe a little sweaty, but he can carry his own bags, thanks.

“Where to?” the cabbie asks him, and Dean climbs into the back seat and lets his legs splay as much as he possibly can. The plane had been uncomfortable in more ways than one. Once he’s finally certain that he isn’t going to bang his knees against anything, Dean digs around in his pocket for the scrap of paper with the address that Ash had given him. He squints at it, then gives up on reading Ash’s squiggly handwriting and passes it up to the driver instead. The guy makes an unattractive noise, but he doesn’t say anything out loud, so Dean lets it slide.

“You from out of town, then?” the cabbie asks. Dean would think that was obvious, considering he just left the _airport_ , but he nods anyways.

“Kansas,” he says, trying to be polite. His headache is threatening to come back, and with a vengeance. “Lawrence, actually.”

“Never been to Kansas, myself,” the cabbie says, pulling out of the LaGuardia parking lot and almost immediately into some of the worst traffic Dean has ever seen. He winces – even if he _does_ get his baby within the next two or three weeks, there might not be much of a chance of driving her. He’s simultaneously relieved and disappointed. When he had been younger, driving had been his only way of coping. Now he can’t even drive the two days it would take him to go from Lawrence to Queens.

Fuck, his life is miserable.

“So, what’s bringing you to New York? Business?” the cabbie asks. Dean rests his head against the window, watching the city pass them by. None of the buildings or streets are familiar. Dean has no idea where he is, or even if the cab is taking him in the right direction. God, he hates having to let other people do things for him.

“My brother’s calling it a mid-life crisis,” Dean sighs. The cab smells like smoke. It’s beginning to make him nervous. “I’m moving here.”

The cabbie whistles, a low, soft sound. “Big move! Crisis or not, you got stones, man. Is Lawrence a big city, then?”

“Not like this,” Dean murmurs.

“Well, good luck then. You got some changes to get used to.”

The cabbie falls silent, curiosity apparently satisfied. Dean’s grateful for the quiet. It means he has less to distract him from the smell of smoke, but it also means that he doesn’t have to answer any more questions. He doesn’t feel like justifying himself to a complete stranger.

The drive from LaGuardia to Jackson Heights (which the cabbie reassures him is exactly what it says on that stupid scrap of paper) is roughly fifteen minutes; the traffic, Dean is told, isn’t that bad, today. If this "isn’t that bad", though, Dean’s almost _positive_ he isn’t going to be driving anywhere. Not on a regular basis, anyways. His baby is meant for open roads and speed limits of fifty-five or higher, not smog and bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Dean’s almost surprised when the taxi finally stops, and the cabbie gestures towards a neat row of apartment buildings. They’re modern without being pretentious, and the streets are bustling with people.

Then the cabbie says, “That’s not the building you’re looking for.”

And he points across the street, at what, to Dean, looks like someone took two houses and some superglue and then roughly smashed them together, and then dropped the resulting monstrosity in the middle of New York like a forgotten child’s toy.

“Shit,” Dean says. “No wonder it’s so cheap.”

“How much you paying?” the cabbie asks, and Dean digs around in his pocket for his wallet, huffing softly.

“Seven-hundred bucks a month,” Dean mutters. “Most utilities included. Gotta pay extra for cable and internet.”

“Boy, you best be prepared for a rough time of it, because seven-hundred a month will get you jack,” the cabbie says matter-of-factly. “Unless you _want_ to share your place with roaches, that is.”

“A friend told me this place was okay.” Dean finally pulls his wallet free, slipping his Visa out and handing it to the cabbie. “I mean, he knows the landlord, and he says it’s clean enough.”

“Well, a cave would be livable, if you spruced it up enough,” the cabbie says sagely. He swipes the Visa, then passes it back to Dean, who tucks it back into his wallet and stuffs the whole thing back into his pocket. “You want for me to help with your bags?”

“Nah,” Dean says. “I got it.” He isn’t sure that he does, though. Still, he manages to get all his bags out of the cab, and if he has a little trouble dragging them across the street, well. Nobody here knows him. Nobody cares. And if he has to pause when he reaches the converted house in order to breathe, because everything smells like car exhaust and smoke and some kind of Indian restaurant down the street, and Dean’s sure that any minute he’s going to lose whatever calm he’d managed to grasp while he was on the plane, well…same thing. No one knows him.

No one cares.

It’s not as comforting as it was, before, but Dean has to make do.

~

Andy Gallagher became a landlord through a series of bizarre coincidences involving his grandmother, and then his uncle, and, finally, his brother (who may or may not be his twin, Dean hasn’t figured that part out yet). He’s obviously not terribly interested in the job, and it shows in the way he escorts Dean through the converted house, lit joint in one hand and the biggest chocolate-chip cookie Dean’s ever seen in the other. Dean keeps eyeing the lit cherry of the joint, but Andy doesn’t seem to notice his discomfort as he leads him up a flight of creaking stairs, talking languidly the whole time.

“I mean, your brother, dude, Ash told me. You’ve done a lot for him.” Andy waves the joint around as he talks, and a cloud of smoke drifts towards Dean. He leans away from it, flinching.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, and resolves to call Ash later and tell him to keep his big mouth shut when it comes to Sam.

“Seriously, putting him through college. Better late than never, right?”

“Right,” Dean mutters.

“I took a few classes at the community college in LaGuardia,” Andy says sagely, stuffing the cookie into his mouth and then digging around in his pocket for what Dean hopes is the key to the door they’ve come to a stop in front of, and not another joint. Or, God, like a mini-bong or something. Do they make those at all? Dean is endlessly fascinated by the ingenuity of stoners, but it’s not a lifestyle he understands. Or wants any part of. “Got an Associate’s. It was pretty cool.”

“Nice,” Dean says, desperately trying to maintain at least a thin veneer of politeness. Andy seems like a laid-back kind of guy, nice, if a little baked, but Dean just wants to get all his shit into his new place.

“All right, layout,” Andy says, finally pulling a ring of keys from his pocket. He painstakingly pulls one of them off and then hands it to Dean. “Two apartments upstairs, three downstairs. Two communal kitchens, but if you want to keep a mini fridge or something in your place, I don’t care. Two communal bathrooms, but you’ve basically got everything to yourself up here. Downstairs you’ve got me, Becky Rosen and her boyfriend Chuck, and Bela Talbot. Lock your doors at night, by the way, ‘cause I’m pretty sure Bela’s a klepto.” Andy grins. “Hot, though. _Smokin’._ ”

Finally, _finally_ , he turns the doorknob, and Dean is allowed to step into his new apartment for the first time.

It’s…definitely less than he’d hoped for. But, to be quite honest, it’s also about as much as he’d expected. The carpet needs to be vacuumed, and the walls are covered with paint that’s roughly the shade of very watered-down chicken broth. There’s an ancient sofa shoved up against the far wall, and Dean notes that the entire "apartment" amounts to a tiny bedroom (and that’s fine, he doesn’t need much space), two closets, and the "living room", which Dean strongly suspects was part of the original bedroom in the first place, and things were just walled off.

“What about upstairs?” he asks. Andy pauses, then deftly licks his thumb and presses it to the smoldering cherry. Dean watches with barely-contained horror; the urge to hyperventilate is incredibly strong. Either Andy doesn’t notice, or he doesn’t care…Dean’s betting on the former. He doesn’t know much about weed, but that seems like some pretty good shit to him.

“You won’t have to worry about upstairs,” Andy says, waving his now-unlit joint like a baton. Dean can feel some of the panic beginning to ebb, but not by any significant amount. “Trust me, dude.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Andy tilts his head, smiling serenely. Then, without another word, he backs out of the room and closes the door, leaving Dean alone with his luggage.

“Fuck,” Dean says. He thinks he hears someone snorting, but there’s no one else in the tiny apartment – just him. So obviously he’s hallucinating _sounds_ as well as _fire_. Awesome.

After a long moment of just standing there, Dean grudgingly starts hauling his duffels into the bedroom. He might not be able to put any of his clothes away, not until his furniture arrives, but he can at least get out his Walkman and the three bags of beef jerky he packed before he left.

Dean kicks all his baggage into the bedroom, then goes to lie down on the sofa. Almost immediately a spring starts digging into his spine.

“It’s going to be a long two days,” he says, and slips on his headphones, beef jerky balanced on his stomach.

~

Dean meets Bela Talbot on his second day in his new apartment, when she walks straight into his living room without even knocking. Without even _knocking_.

Andy comes by with a padlock about an hour after Dean gently (but firmly) escorts her back out into the hallway, looking vaguely apologetic and significantly less high than before.

“So, you weren’t kidding when you said to lock the door.”

“Yeah,” Andy says sheepishly. “But I guess she’s learned how to pick the new locks, so…This’ll have to do until I can get them changed again. Honestly, I’m surprised she even came in here, I mean, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Just stuff,” Andy says vaguely. Dean scowls at him, but then Rufus texts him to let him know that he’s parked outside, and suddenly everything is lost in a flurry of movement and trying to figure out how to get the bed up the stairs, not to mention his dresser, and where the fuck did Dean put his Walkman, because it was _right there_ , he’d left it right there on that shitty couch…

“Dude, did you put your CD player in the hallway?”

Andy has it. Of course he does. Dean drops his box of clothes down on his newly set-up bed, grabbing the Walkman away from Andy and then setting it on top of one of his duffels.

“Must have knocked it off the sofa or something,” Dean mutters. He’s got the beginnings of a killer headache and he has the feeling that if he so much as _smells_ smoke today he’ll freak out.

Andy looks less than convinced, but Dean manages to get him to help bring in two more boxes before he cries "landlord duties" and then flees back downstairs. And Rufus isn’t going to be any help, considering his bad knees, so Dean’s left on his own, bringing in boxes, his lamp, his small bookshelf, until the entire apartment looks like an IKEA exploded in it and the U-Haul is finally, _finally_ empty.

“I’ll bring your girl up in the next few days,” Rufus tells him – well, shouts at him, because Dean doesn’t step beyond the threshold of the building, and Rufus doesn’t really leave the cab of the truck. “Just let me rest these old legs a little first.”

“No problem,” Dean calls back. The smell of car exhaust is making him dizzy. He wants to go back inside, where at least he has his stuff to comfort him. “Take your time, man, I don’t think I’ll be getting too many opportunities to drive her, anyways.”

“Damn shame,” Rufus says, shaking his head. Dean watches him pull away from the curb for a moment, and then, feeling stupidly grateful, he shuts the front door, blocking out the noise and the harsh light and the overwhelming smells of New York. He leans against the wall, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths, counting. One. Two. Three –

“Oh, hi!”

Dean doesn’t open his eyes. It’s a woman’s voice, but not Bela’s – this one is louder and happier and definitely less focused on sex appeal.

“You must be Dean! Andy said you seemed nice! I’m Becky Rosen. It’s nice to meet you…?”

Dean opens his eyes. Sure enough, he’s faced, not with a sultry brunette, but a younger, perkier blonde chick wearing a black shirt with a white backslash on it. Dean doesn’t get it, and he doesn’t want to be accused of looking at her tits, so he focuses on a point somewhere over her left shoulder while she smiles and waves at him.

“Uh, yeah,” Dean clears his throat. “I’m Dean. Andy hasn’t said anything about, uh, you?”

“That’s okay,” Becky says cheerfully. “I mean, Chuck’s the famous one, not me!”

“Chuck?” That name seems familiar. Oh, right. “Your, uh, boyfriend?”

“My boyfriend.” Becky sighs dreamily. “He’s an author! Published, even! He’s written this series of books about these two guys who drive around and hunt monsters and ghosts!” Becky leans closer, whispering conspiratorially. “He’s a big fan of the Buffy series. Do you watch television at all?”

“Not really,” Dean says faintly. Becky looks vaguely disappointed, but she _does_ rock back on her heels a bit, allowing Dean to breathe easier. He thinks he feels something brush against his hand, and he jerks instinctively, wiping his palm against his jeans. Christ, he hopes the place doesn’t have spiders. Rats or cockroaches he can handle, but spiders are just freakin’ _weird_. He’s not _scared_ of them or anything, but those are way too many legs for him to even begin to comprehend.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” Becky is saying. Dean tunes back into the conversation (and he uses the term loosely) just in time for Becky to smile at him and say, “If you need any help at all, just let me know! There’s this _great_ medium I go to, really helpful if you need to balance your energy, but I’ve heard from my friend that he does some _awesome_ cleansing rituals.”

“ _What_ ,” Dean says, but Becky is already twirling around on her heel and skipping off. Literally _skipping_.

Dean wonders if she was smoking something, too, or if that’s just her personality. He can only imagine what her boyfriend’s like.

His phone rings. Dean stuffs his hand into his pocket, glaring at nothing in particular. He pulls his cell out, and his expression lightens somewhat when he sees who’s calling. He flips open the phone and holds it to his ear.

“Hey, Mr. Singer,” he says, and then pauses. “Uh, okay, Bobby. Nice to finally talk to you. Yeah, sure I can come in. Tuesday?”

Dean glances out the door’s small window, considering the world outside. He needs a job. Bobby Singer is his best bet. And he’ll be able to work on cars – cars that are safely turned off while he takes them apart and puts them back together. No chance of any errant sparks.

“Yeah, I can do that,” he says finally. He gets that feeling again, something brushing across his hand – his other hand, this time – and he shakes it irritably. “No problem. Can I get the address?” Dean listens, and then winces. He doesn’t know the layout of New York yet, but it sounds like he might have to take the bus or the subway in order to get to Bobby’s shop, if he doesn’t get the Impala back quickly. Which is…which is fine. He can deal. Public transportation has never been his thing, but he supposes there’s a first time for everything, right?

“Looking forward to meeting you too, Bobby.” Except Bobby had said something more along the lines of "you’d better be as good as Ash promised you were, or else I’m gonna be pissed." The click of the phone hanging up has Dean grinning. As much as the idea of going out makes him nauseous, he can’t help but like Bobby on an intrinsic level. He seems like the kind of guy that Dean likes to think John Winchester would have become, if he’d had the chance to live past forty.

He flips his phone shut, then tucks it back into his pocket and makes his way back up the stairs to his apartment. He’s got a lot of unpacking to do, and he wants to get it all finished as soon as possible.

 _Hey,_ he thinks he hears. He pauses mid-step, and then cautiously lowers his foot to the stair, peering over his shoulder.

“Andy?” There’s no answer. Dean cranes his neck, trying to see into the tiny kitchen just past the front hallway. He can’t see all of it, but he’s pretty sure there’s no one in there. The whole downstairs area is quiet.

“Huh.” He shrugs, and then turns back, continuing up the stairs. A shiver runs down his spine, and Dean rubs at the goosebumps that have suddenly appeared on his arm.

“Cold drafts in summer, what the fuck,” he mutters. No one answers him.

Thank God for that.

~

Dean sets up his furniture without needing to worry about whether or not Sam’s gigantic, noodle-like limbs will accidentally knock anything over. His bedroom is tiny, but there’s enough space for his desk (if he shoves it against the far wall), his lamp (if he doesn’t mind having it directly in his face while he sits at his desk), and, of course, his bed (it’s normal to sleep in the fetal position, isn’t it? It’s not like he has enough room to do otherwise). Dean comforts himself with the photos that Sam keeps sending him of the apartment he’s sharing with Ruby – the place isn’t as small as Dean’s, but it’s got an ant infestation, it smells "funky" (Sam’s word, not Dean’s), and the neighbors are obnoxiously loud.

Dean has yet to meet his neighbor. In fact, he’s starting to suspect that the apartment next to his is empty – he hasn’t heard a peep out of the guy (or girl?) for four days. Which, in Dean’s experience, isn’t all that long a time to go without hearing from someone (there had been times when Dad would disappear for weeks at a time), but still. He thinks about maybe bringing it to the attention of Andy, but then reconsiders when he remembers that Andy had mentioned, in passing, spending some personal time with “Big Betty”, quite possibly the largest bong that Dean has ever seen. Andy is probably immobile on the floor of his apartment by now, so Dean is on his own.

And it’d be fine, really, if he didn’t keep _losing_ things. First it was his Walkman (so far he’s found it on his bed, on the stairs, and out in the hallway), and now it’s things like socks (under the bed when they were in his dresser before), his wallet (stuffed behind the couch when it should have been on his nightstand), and his phone, which, weirdly enough, only ever shows up in one place: right next to the wall in his bedroom. The wall that separates Dean’s apartment from the one next door.

“This is bullshit,” he mutters, scooping up his phone and stuffing it back into his pocket. He can’t lose it if he just holds on to it twenty four-seven, right? He leans against the wall, forcing himself to breathe. He has all the curtains pulled shut, so it’s…better, than it normally is. He doesn’t even want to _think_ about Tuesday. About going to meet Bobby.

Going _outside_. He isn’t sure when "outside" became such a horrifying thing – all he knows is that he doesn’t want to get lost in the haze of smoke and traffic. He can’t think of a single logical reason as to why he’s so worried, but then, he guesses "logic" doesn’t really have anything to do with it. He’s been afraid of things since he was four years old, and this is just another fear to get over. If he can convince himself that he can operate a microwave without it exploding and setting his head on fire, he can convince himself that he can go outside…

Right?

“I’ll be losing my fucking keys next,” he sighs, resting his head against the wall. “Or my _head_. Jesus.”

“Perhaps if you purchased a key ring.”

Dean’s head snaps up.

“For your keys. I do not know how to avoid misplacing your head.”

“Christ,” Dean mutters. He has no idea where the voice is coming from, but it’s got to be somewhere nearby. Through the wall? He cautiously puts his ear against the plaster, listening. “Uh…hello?”

“Hello.” It’s _right there_. Dean realizes, with sudden clarity, that he’s talking to his neighbor. Through the wall that they share, which is…admittedly a weird first meeting, but still. The guy actually exists.

“My name’s Dean Winchester,” he offers, speaking loudly. “I, uh…I’m your neighbor?”

“There is no need to shout, the walls are very thin. And I am pleased to meet you, Dean.”

Oh. That’s…good to know. Dean rocks back on his heels, trying to figure out when, exactly, his life got so weird. Not even _tragic_ , just _bizarre_. He’s got one neighbor who’s already broken into his apartment once, another who will only talk to him through a _wall_ , apparently, a landlord that’s perpetually stoned and a kid brother who’s shacking up with a (formerly, but Dean’s still skeptical) meth-addicted Satanist while he tries to work towards a fancy college degree.

“My life is weird,” Dean laments.

“It is not so strange as you might think.”

“Yeah?” Dean scoffs. “How would you know?”

“I know.”

There’s a quiet certainty in the voice – it’s a man’s voice, soft-spoken but deep. Intense. Dean wonders what the guy looks like. He’s probably like, Sam-size. Some huge, muscular dude, judging by his voice.

Dean shrugs. He doesn’t want to get into an argument about how crap his life is, especially not with a total stranger. That would just be…weird.

“So, uh…What’s your name?” _Please don’t invite me over,_ Dean thinks. He really doesn’t think he could stand it if the guy turned out to be some nutjob in a homemade tin hat.

A pause. And then, “Castiel Angioli.”

Dean blinks. _Okay_. That’s…not a lot to go on, but whatever. If the guy wants to play twenty questions, Dean can do that.

“Castiel? That’s an…unusual name.” There’s a long silence. Dean idly pulls his phone out and flips it open, closed again.

“My father is a man of great faith.”

“Huh.” Dean eyes Sam’s number on his contact list. “So…Christian? Jewish? Buddhist?” _Please don’t say "Satanist"._

“He believed in the love and truth of God. I do not think he ever gave a name to it.”

“What about you?”

There isn’t an answer. Dean looks back on what he just asked and winces. “Uh, sorry. That’s kind of a personal question, you don’t have to answer that.”

“I do not mind. I…have not spoken to anyone in some time.”

“Kind of a recluse, huh?”

“One could say that.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Dean wonders what Castiel is doing over there. He doesn’t hear anything, no shuffle of footsteps, no sounds at all, just the guy’s voice, drifting through the plaster. Is he standing over there, perfectly still, just…talking, the way Dean is? It’s been so long since Dean had a conversation with a stranger that he can’t tell whether that’s weird or not.

“I do not think that I am particularly religious, anymore,” Dean hears. _Huh_.

“That sucks.” Dean has never been particularly religious, so he isn’t sure how _much_ it sucks…but he has the idea that having something like your faith taken away from you is a pretty big deal. “So, uh…do you want to come over? I don’t really have anything to offer you to drink, and I’ve been living off of takeout for the past few days, but…yeah.” God, that was the most awkward "get to know you" invitation ever. Dean thumps his head against the wall, groaning quietly. When Castiel answers, his voice is tinged with amusement.

“I think it might be more prudent for you to procure some sustenance.”

That startles a laugh out of Dean, because…seriously? This guy talks like a fucking _Vulcan_ or something (and it’s Sam’s fault entirely that he even knows what a Vulcan is), and Dean just…it’s weird. His _life_ , goddamn.

“You’re probably right,” he says, and absently rubs the back of his neck. The whole room is chilled – he really needs to talk to Andy about getting the heating and air conditioning fixed. It explains a lot as to why the place is so cheap, though.

Luckily, he has yet to encounter the rat or bat or _whatever_ problem that Ash mentioned, although he’s heard Bela complaining bitterly about them in the early hours of the morning. Dean hasn’t heard a thing.

It’s just so freaking _cold_.

“Well, as soon as I get around to stocking the fridge, I’ll be sure to let you know.” Dean shivers. Jesus, he can see his _breath_. That’s weird, isn’t it? Even with the air conditioning malfunctioning or whatever the hell it’s doing, it shouldn’t get cold enough for his breath to actually _freeze_...right?

“I must go,” Castiel says. Dean rubs his hands together in a futile attempt to keep them warm. “But…I have enjoyed speaking with you, Dean. I hope that you decide to make this your home.”

“I don’t really have anything to go back to. But…you don’t want to hear about my sob stories. It was good to meet you, Cas.”

There’s a pause.

“No one has ever given me a nickname before. Thank you.”

Dean blinks.

“Uh…you’re welcome?”

But he doesn’t get an answer. Either Castiel is ignoring him, or he’s left his apartment entirely. Dean didn’t hear a door open or shut, but it’s possible. Maybe Castiel’s door is just better oiled than Dean’s.

It’s only then that Dean realizes he’s gone almost an hour without needing to stop and calm himself down.

“Huh,” he says, and then begins to work on moving his nightstand to the side. He isn’t sure if Castiel can only hear him through _that_ particular stretch of wall, but Dean doesn’t mind moving things around in order to accommodate him.

~

Bobby Singer is a man who doesn’t accept any bullshit.

At least, that’s Dean’s impression of him, and he’s proven right the first time a customer comes into Singer Salvage and Auto Repair and complains that their car has been making odd noises "for months". Bobby immediately calls the man an idiot (although he’s got a Midwestern drawl that turns the word into "idjit"), and then sends him to a far more expensive repair shop a few blocks down the street.

“I’ve never seen someone turn away customers before,” Dean says hesitantly. He wipes sweat from his brow with the back of his hand – it’s hot out, today, and he’d been unable to work up the courage to use the bus. It hadn’t been too long a walk, but Dean was still shaking and uncertain by the end of it. He can’t wait to get his car back. Driving might not be as easy as it used to be, but even just sitting in the Impala, with the engine off and all the windows rolled down, sometimes helps.

“There’s a difference between a problem and a paying customer.” Bobby jerks his head towards the front door. The inside of Singer Salvage and Auto Repair functions as both Bobby’s office and his house – his living room is crowded with so many books that Dean’s intimidated just looking at all of them, and his "office" consists of a desk that’s been shoved up against one wall. Stacks of paper are piled atop it, swaying slightly whenever the door opens or closes. “That boy would have _kept_ coming back.”

“Isn’t that the point?”

Bobby gives him a _look_. “I don’t feel the need to coddle fools, Winchester. If that makes me a poor businessman, then so be it.”

Dean carefully steps over a pile of books as Bobby leads him into his kitchen, and then pulls two bottles of beer out of the fridge. It’s definitely the most informal job interview Dean has ever been through, but…he likes it. He likes Bobby. The guy obviously knows what he’s doing, and he doesn’t take shit from anyone. Dean can get behind that mentality.

Bobby hands him one of the bottles, and Dean barely thinks, just twists the cap off without looking. Bobby nods like he approves. Dean gets the feeling that asking for a bottle opener when it’s unnecessary is grounds for intense scowling and muttering in this house.

He surreptitiously checks to see if the stove is on. It isn’t, and he breathes a quiet sigh of relief when he thinks that Bobby isn’t looking.

“So, you think you can handle this job? It’s not construction, but Ash says you do well with cars.” Bobby doesn’t open his beer, which makes Dean wonder if maybe _he_ wasn’t supposed to, either. He takes a pull anyways. Molson isn’t his favorite, but it’s hot outside, and the beer is cold.

“My dad was a mechanic,” Dean says quietly. It’s a sore spot, but if it helps him get the job then he’ll use it. “He taught me everything he knew.”

“Your father would be John Winchester, right? Ash told me about him, too. Said he knew his cars about as well as he knew his liquor. I’m assuming that means he was good.”

Dean swallows, and makes a mental note to call Ash and yell at him as soon as he gets back to the apartment. “Yes, sir. He knew what he was doing.”

Bobby studies him over his bottle, eyes narrowed. Dean _really_ doesn’t want to get into his issues with his father, but he still throws back his shoulders and stares right back at Bobby. Because damnit, Dean Winchester doesn’t take any shit _either_.

Bobby twists the top off his beer and then raises it, like a toast. “You’ve got the job.”

Dean blinks. “Really?”

“Did I stutter, boy? You start on Monday. Be here at eight and we’ll talk about your pay. And your arrangements.”

“My arrangements?”

Bobby gives him another _look_. “When you walked through that door you were shaking like an aspen in a windstorm. I don’t know what barrel of issues you’re toting around, but I trust Ash not to steer me wrong. If he says you’re worth the trouble, then you’re worth it.”

Bobby jerks his head towards the front door.

“Now get out, before I get sick of looking at you.”

Dean, perhaps wisely, takes his beer and flees.

  



	2. Chapter 2

Dean isn’t sure how this is supposed to work. Does he just…talk? Does he have to knock first? If he were going to the door, he would, but this is…

This is talking to a wall. Essentially.

Knocking is probably a good idea. Dean takes a deep breath, then leans against the wall next to his bed and knocks three times.

“Castiel?” he says, maybe a little louder than he should. He wonders if anyone downstairs can hear him – he doubts Becky or Andy would care, but Bela’s the type to complain, and he still has no idea about the mysterious Chuck.

He shivers as the air conditioning kicks in, and while it’s hot outside, it’s not "soak yourself in water and then force yourself into the freezer" kind of hot. He’s tried to hunt down Andy in order to ask about getting in fixed, but the guy’s always just gone out or else he’s too "busy" to talk. Dean assumes that "busy" is the newer, trendier way of saying "eating pot brownies and watching old Nickelodeon cartoons with all of the lights off". Andy is a good guy, but he’s not a good landlord. Each apartment is largely autonomous, so Dean figures he’ll probably just have to fix the air conditioning himself.

He raises his hand to knock again, but, luckily, he doesn’t have to.

“Dean?”

“Hey.” Dean smiles. Castiel just sounds so…surprised. Like he’s not sure what to say. Like he didn’t expect Dean to talk to him again. Which is stupid, because Castiel’s the only person he’s had a meaningful conversation with since he moved here…Well, aside from Bobby, but Dean gets the feeling that Bobby isn’t the type of person to kindly and patiently listen to your problems.

“Hello.” Castiel’s voice is warm. Kind. Dean wonders, even more than before, what he looks like. What it is that’s keeping him cooped up in his apartment. Dean pulls his wallet out of his pocket and tosses it onto his nightstand, then tosses himself onto his bed. Everything still has that weird "things have been moved" feeling – he hasn’t been sleeping as well as he’d like because of it, for the past few days.

“How was your day?” he asks, because it’s been a while since he’s engaged in polite conversation with someone, but he thinks that’s a pretty standard opening line.

“It was…my day. Uneventful. You left your cell phone here.”

Dean frowns, staring up at the ceiling. He wonders what’s on the other side of the wall – Castiel’s living room? Maybe he’s sitting on a couch. Dean hopes he isn’t just…standing there. “I did? How do you know?”

“I heard it ringing.”

Dean feels his frown smooth out. His ringtone is some good, old-school Def Leppard. You could probably hear it from outside, if the volume were turned all the way up. “Huh. Sorry about that.”

“It is not a problem. The sound is…soothing. Things were very quiet, before you moved in. No one talked to me.”

“That might be because you hide in your apartment all day. Gotta get out and socialize.” Coming from Dean, that’s pretty funny. He’s okay with talking to people, but only on a short-term basis. He gets burnt out quicker than Sam does…Sam has always been a social butterfly.

Castiel makes a noise that Dean interprets as a negative. “I have tried. Things are…different, for me. But it no longer matters. You speak to me, and I am content.”

That’s sort of a creepy thing to say to a guy you only met like four days ago, but whatever. Dean shrugs, folding his hands over his stomach and closing his eyes. As long as Castiel doesn’t start slipping dead flowers and love letters written in blood under his door, he thinks he’ll be okay. “Well…good to know. I guess.”

“How was your interview with Bobby Singer?”

Dean cracks open one eye. “And how the hell do you know about that?”

“I listen. Often, I cannot help it. As I said, the walls are very thin.”

“Another thing for me to yell at Andy about,” Dean grumbles. “It was…it was a weird interview. But Bobby says I got the job. You know him at all?”

“I have merely heard of him.”

“He seems like a good guy. I mean, he even said…” Dean trails off, and he’s met with interested silence on the other side of the wall. He shakes his head, and then rubs absently at his cold arms.

“He said?”

Dean says nothing. There’s something about not having to see the person you’re talking to…it feels almost liberating. Safer. Like having an imaginary friend, or something like that. It’s weird. All his life he’s tried to keep himself to himself, because his father had taught him a lot of things, and one of them was that you could only ever trust family. Even when family hurt you, they would still always be there for you, because that’s how family worked. And yet here he is, thinking about talking to a complete stranger about his many and varied issues. And just admitting to having them is going to make his jaw clench, and…

“You do not have to speak to me, if you do not wish.”

…And apparently Castiel is taking his prolonged silence as an indication that Dean is somehow upset with him. Dean sits up, putting his head closer to the wall.

“No, it’s not you. Really. It’s just…I don’t want to talk to people about it. Especially people I’ve only known for a few days and who I met through a wall.”

Dean’s words are met with a long moment of silence.

And then, “I see. That is wise, I think. I would suggest that you maintain that stance when dealing with your other neighbors.”

Dean blinks. “Other neighbors? You mean like Becky?”

“I am referring to Bela Talbot.”

“Oh, her. Yeah, I get it. Lock my doors at night and keep my wallet chained to my wrist, the whole thing.” Dean lifts his hips up in order to pull the bed sheets out, wrapping them around his shoulders as best he can.

“She is more than a petty thief. Please be wary, Dean.”

Dean laughs. “You make it sound like she’s out to get me personally, dude.”

“I would not put it past her.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Dean turns his head into his pillow. Castiel’s concern is simultaneously uplifting (it’s not like anyone else is showing any) and sort of weird. Dean isn’t sure how to feel about it.

The best thing, he decides, is just to ignore it.

“Thanks for the advice,” he says. “But I think I’m just gonna take it a day at a time.”

“You are tired. I believe I shall occupy myself with other things.”

Dean closes his eyes. “I am a bit…how’d you know? That I’m tired.”

Dean can almost hear the smile in Castiel’s voice. “Because I listen. Sleep well, Dean.”

Surprisingly enough, Dean does.

~

A day and a half later, Dean discovers that Bela Talbot is not only a kleptomaniac-slash-cat burglar, but she’s also a cocaine addict. Dean finds this out in the least pleasant way possible: by having her come into his apartment (again, unannounced, and uninvited), her nose bloody and her pupils severely dilated, offering to have sex with him. Dean cringes and gingerly escorts her from his living room, and then calls Andy as discreetly as possible.

When the police come, Dean stays in his apartment and watches out the window as Bela is pushed into a squad car, along with a dark-haired man in an elegant suit. Dean doesn’t know his name, but he’s got the sort of face that screams both "trouble" and "money".

“How did you know?” Dean says. Cas can’t hear him, of course. He’s not in the bedroom…but still. How long has Castiel been living here? Long enough, apparently, to become aware of everyone’s bad habits. He wonders if he’ll stay here long enough for Castiel to learn something about him.

It’s weird, though. The guy never leaves his room, and, as far as Dean can tell, doesn’t talk to anyone else in the building but him. Dean never hears a phone ring, and he never sees any packages with the last name "Angioli" on them. He guesses Cas might be able to just…live entirely through email and the internet, but he also thinks that would be a pretty lonely way to go through life.

Sam calls him again, and Dean’s there, he just…doesn’t answer in time.

(”Hey, Dean…Uh, I just wanted to see how you’re doing. I haven’t heard from you in a few days, and I know I’m not exactly your favorite person right now, but…please. Call me.” Dean can hear Ruby talking in the background. Her voice grates against his ears – she sounds like a harpy calling hell-bound men to die.)

Ash sends him an email; Dean skims it without really absorbing any of the information.

(Inbox: 1 message

Re: [no subject]

zeppelin greatest hits.zip

hey Deano it’s Ash. Ellen and Jo really miss you and the site isn’t the same without you here. Bobby says you start on mon. that’s really rad are you going to be doing reg. cars or working on sweet classics? email me back bro.

oh yeah and here’s some music for you just to make you feel more at home. just use winzip or something and then you can play it using windows media player.

ttyl dude

\- Ash)

Dean’s owned his computer for almost six years and he still doesn’t know how the whole "downloading music" thing works. It was only at Sam’s insistence that he switched from cassettes to compact discs – and only because Sam had gone out and bought him the Walkman with his own money, earned from bussing tables at the local diner. But Dean has the idea that Ash might be able to tell if he’s downloaded the music or not (Ash can do a lot of things involving the internet that both confuse and amaze Dean), so he clicks the link and then just leaves the .zip file on his desktop, unopened.

He falls asleep on his couch and dreams that Castiel is wondering where he is. At one point he thinks he hears his name, whispered against his cheek, but it’s so soft, and the room is so cold. When he finally wakes up entirely, he’s forgotten all about it.

~

Rufus brings the Impala around on Sunday, sacrificing his weekend off in order to make sure that Dean can, if not travel in style, than at least have something a little more familiar, something that he can touch and take care of. It’s not like having his brother back, but it’s the closest he’s going to get.

He calls Sam, later that night. Their conversation goes something like this:

“Dean! God. I was worried.”

“I’m a big boy, Sammy, I can take care of myself.”

“No, that’s…never mind. How are you? You’re doing okay?”

“That’s one way of putting it, I guess.”

“…Dean, I had to leave. You know that, right? I can’t just…keep relying on you for the rest of my life.”

(Dean doesn’t say anything, because he thinks that there’s a sizeable difference between "wanting to be independent" and "moving across the country to live with a woman who you’ve only ever seen on Skype", but if he mentions it then Sam will get huffy and offended on Ruby’s behalf, and he’ll say that she’s a "great girl, she had some problems but she’s dealing with them", and it’ll be a mess because Dean’s the last person who’d say that people are irredeemable, but he knows Ruby’s type. She’s the kind of person who won’t fix herself until she hits rock bottom, and she’ll drag as many people as she can down with her along the way.)

Sam clears his throat.

“So, uh…have you met your neighbors yet?”

And because Dean doesn’t want to explain about Bela, he says “Yeah,” and then, “I’ve even talked to them.”

“That’s great! Are they nice?”

“What is this, summer camp? They’re neighbors. One’s an author, one’s a huge stoner, and one won’t talk to me except through my bedroom wall. What else do you want me to tell you, Sam?” How I’m worried that the slightest hint of stress will trigger a meltdown these days? How the smell of smog now makes me sick to my stomach? How the noise from the traffic keeps me up all night, and that’s only if the nightmares don’t get there first?

How I miss my little brother?

“…He only talks to you through the wall? That’s…weird.”

Dean rubs his right temple and hums. “Yeah. Yeah, it is. But Cas is a cool guy. He’s…some sort of recluse, I guess. I don’t think he talks to anyone but me.”

And then, because Sam tries to change the subject to Dean’s own reclusiveness, and because Dean wants even less to do with that topic than he wants to do with any others Sam might offer him, he quickly says that he needs to go and run errands (he can count the number of times he’s been out of his apartment on one hand, and none of them have been errand-related), and then hangs up.

He spends the rest of Sunday night in his bedroom, too tired or else too worried about his new job to respond when Castiel hesitantly says his name.

Monday arrives, the weather unable to make up its mind between dreary, rain-laden clouds and a brisk, almost pleasant breeze, and Dean wakes up with an immediate and all-pervasive sense of dread. He’s had only minor freak-outs since he first made the journey to Singer Salvage (and he does consider it a journey – it had certainly been harrowing enough), but he’s worried that this will be the day that changes that. He doesn’t want to have to work with people, people who might see him clenching his teeth and trying not to hyperventilate, but the nature of the job practically demands it of him, and he’s…he’s just going to have to suck it up and deal.

He notices when he glances out the window that the traffic, at least, is light. He’ll be able to take the Impala out for a ride, even if it means he’ll have to park her by a meter for the whole day.

He rubs his eyes and rolls wearily out of bed; he can’t remember what he dreamt about last night, but he’s guessing it wasn’t anything pleasant, judging by the headache that’s threatening to burst right behind his left eyeball. He presses the heel of his hand hard against that socket, wincing when the pressure does nothing to ease the dull throb in his brain.

The floor is cold as ice – the entire fucking apartment is freezing, and Dean dresses twice as fast as usual…but the cold helps his headache, just a bit. When he finally gets his socks and boots on he breathes a sigh of relief.

He keeps meaning to call Andy about how cold it is, but he never does. He’s not as scrupulously organized as Sam – he doesn’t have a mental to-do list – but Dean resolves to tell his landlord about the problem that day.

“First day of the new job.” Dean scowls, grabbing a leftover fortune cookie from his living room table. No time to heat anything up, but maybe, if he’s feeling good, he can grab something quick on the way to Bobby’s. “Hoo-fucking-ray.”

“You will be fine.”

The voice drifts in from the bedroom – Castiel’s voice – but there’s something weird about how it sounds. Dean tilts his head, and gets the feeling that it should be a lot closer than it really is. He’s impressed by Castiel’s ability to project, though. He goes to stand in the doorway to his bedroom, arms crossed over his chest.

“Don’t shout,” he scolds. “It’s still early.” He envies those people who get to sleep in on a Monday, so he doesn’t feel too bad when Castiel ignores him and continues on in the exact same tone (which, Dean realizes, isn’t really shouting, just…talking).

“I have faith in you,” he says, and Dean snorts.

“Yeah, faith is weird. I don’t put too much stock in it.” One day you thought you had it, and then the next day it was gone. Dean doesn’t need to look any farther than Castiel himself: the son of a religious man, now an antisocial recluse trapped in his own apartment, relegated to only talking to another antisocial recluse for as long as he remains too angry, or scared, or bitter to leave his safety bubble. If that doesn’t scream "I lost my faith in God", then Dean doesn’t know what does.

“Yet it remains,” Castiel says serenely. “And mine does not waver. You are a good man, Dean Winchester. You will do good things.”

Dean shrugs, vaguely uncomfortable with where the conversation is going. He’s not the sort of person anyone should have faith in, let alone a stranger that he’s never even seen. Dean’s aware of the risks, too – what if Castiel is actually like the murderous lunatic who killed his mother? What if he’s actually like any number of assholes that Dean protected Sammy from when they were growing up? What if? It only serves to make him worry more.

And yet Castiel’s voice is so soft. Maybe even kind.

“All right,” he says, more to fill the silence than anything else. “I, uh. I have to go.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll…talk to you later. Or something.”

Castiel’s voice is amused. “I hope you do.”

Dean backs away from his bedroom, then grabs his keys from the living room table and heads out.

He opens the fortune cookie one-handed as he unlocks his car, stuffing half quickly into his mouth and then pulling out the little slip of paper with his teeth. He spits it into his palm as soon as he’s seated behind the wheel, eating the other half of the stale cookie as he reads.

You will offer help to a friend in need.

Dean laughs, crumples the slip of paper into a ball and then tosses it into the ashtray.

“Friends,” he mutters, and pulls out into the street.

~

Bobby might be the sort of man that doesn’t take any bullshit, but roughly half of running a successful business is dealing with idiots and assholes, and even Dean is better at it than Bobby is. When a customer brings in a picture of her car, rather than the actual car itself (which, she says, won’t move from her parking space), Bobby wants nothing more than to kick her out of his garage…but Dean’s the one who pulls the girl aside (her name’s Lisa, she’s new in town, and she’s never owned a car before) and walks her through the basic steps of checking her oil, reading her gas gauge, and making sure that nothing is leaking. He charges her thirty bucks and notes it in Bobby’s records as a "consultation fee".

She hands her phone number over, along with her twenty and ten, and smiles at him as Dean stands there, worried that he’s going to make the mistake of glancing sideways, that there’ll be a wall of flame waiting for him.

Luckily, she leaves before Dean has the chance to start hyperventilating, and Bobby only looks knowingly at him as he heads inside and locks himself in the man’s bathroom for ten minutes.

Dean thinks he looks speculative when he comes back out, but there’s work to be done and Dean can’t be bothered to decipher the guy’s facial expressions – someone brings in a Ford Thunderbird that’s in desperate need of some TLC, and Dean loses himself in the engine, in oil and grease and tools, and he manages to find a place where everything that isn’t the car becomes inconsequential.

The car runs better for it, by the end of the day, and Dean is exhausted from work, rather than irrational terror. It’s a good feeling. He heads home with the sensation that, even if he isn’t going for a fancy college degree like Sam is, he’s still doing something with himself. He’s not huddling like a coward in his apartment.

“You did good, son,” Bobby praises – Dean gets the feeling that Bobby implies praise more often than he says it outright, which makes him feel…vaguely proud and vaguely uncomfortable, at the same time.

He manages seven hours. Seven solid hours of working either by himself or alongside Bobby, six hours of examining cars and changing oil and asking whether the sound the engine is making is more of a "clunk" or a "buzz". He accepts customers that Bobby would normally turn away, but stays well clear of the perpetually smoking woman with the lime green Honda, so he figures it’s an even trade-off.

“You should think about doing consulting more often,” Bobby suggests, as Dean is pulling on his jacket and getting ready to leave. “You’re a hell of a lot better at bullshitting than I am. Stupid people appreciate that.”

Dean doesn’t give it much thought as he drives home, too busy muscling through the urge to hit the brakes and take deep breaths (there’s really nowhere to pull over, here in the city, not unless he wants to pay a meter), but by the time he reaches the apartment it's started to bother him. Consulting. It's not the sort of job title he'd ever imagined himself having, but, then again, it's not like he imagined he would pack up all his shit and move to New York, either. He parks outside Andy's place, allows himself five minutes to breathe and pull himself together, and then heads inside.

Becky isn't exactly waiting for him, but Dean doubts it's a coincidence that she just so happens to be in the kitchen as he walks in, hovering over what has to be the ugliest sandwich Dean has ever seen. Nothing, he thinks, should have that many layers.

"Oh, hey!" Becky chirps, and slathers more mustard on what Dean thinks might be ham, but he isn't sure. "So! How was your first day of work?"

"If Ash told you somehow, I'm gonna be pissed," Dean mutters, and Becky tilts her head. She looks like a confused Labrador.

"Who's Ash? Andy told me. Was he not supposed to?" Becky's mouth pulls into a frown. "Do I have to have words with him?"

Mustard-covered knife and horrendous sandwich aside, Becky's kind of scary when she's glaring (even if it isn't at anyone in particular), and Dean quickly holds up his hands. Andy's hardly his best friend, but he doesn't want to get the guy in trouble, either.

"No words needed," he says quickly, and Becky's thunderous expression subsides. "It just…seems like everyone knows what's going with my life, that's all."

"Perils of living in a small building." Becky nods sagely, and then viciously smushes the two halves of her monster sandwich together. A mixture of mustard and what might be horseradish drips down onto the plate, and Dean manages to keep from grimacing only by a very narrow margin indeed. "Everybody knows everybody's business. If you want anyone to back off, though, just say the word!"

"I'll keep that in mind." Dean pauses, a thought occurring to him. "Hey, uh…what do you know about Castiel Angioli, then?" He wonders if anyone even knows (or remembers) that Castiel still lives in the building.

Judging by Becky's expression, though, people know he's there. She looks a little sad. A little bit…frightened? What the hell?

"No one really talks about it," she says quietly. "Chuck was here, but it all happened before I moved in."

Dean stares. "What happened?"

But Becky shakes her head, holding the sandwich out in front of her like a sword as she swings around and heads for her own apartment.

"Ask Andy!" she calls back; Dean hears the click of her door swinging shut, and then he's alone in the kitchen, left to stare at the half-empty jar of mustard Becky had left out.

Dean puts it away. Not because he's trying to be polite, but because the smell of mustard is making him nauseous.

Andy isn't all that helpful, either. Dean manages to get as far as saying "Cas - " before the door is being shut in his face. He's starting to think Castiel might be some sort of mob boss or something, the way people are treating him. Like he's got the plague, or like he'll kill them if they mention his name. Dean rubs his arms - he's got goosebumps, but he isn't sure why - and then glances down as, with a soft rustle, Andy shoves a piece of paper through the crack beneath his door.

"Gee, thanks," Dean grumbles, but stoops down to pick it up anyways. He smoothes it out, examining what Andy's scribbled on it.

Call Gabriel.

Followed by a phone number. The numbers are jagged, pressed too hard into the paper. It looks like Andy's hand might have been shaking. Dean carefully folds the note, puts it in his pocket, and then, when it becomes obvious that Andy has nothing else to say to him, he turns wearily on his heels and heads upstairs to his apartment, his thin-walled bedroom, and his possibly mafia-affiliated neighbor.

~

Dean gets up. He showers and shaves, gets dressed, eats whatever leftovers he has in the fridge (usually of the Chinese or pizza persuasion), and then he grabs his keys and he goes to work. He does this every day, the exact same time, the exact same way. Every day. He lies to himself, says that the routine doesn't comfort him as much as it probably does, even though he's about twice as likely to freak out if he does something differently. He had a routine in Lawrence, too, but that was different. He had Sam, then.

Now he has Castiel. Who, yeah, is just a voice drifting through the bedroom wall at the best of times, a silent presence otherwise, but it's…something, because Dean doesn't talk to Becky, or to Chuck, her mysterious writer boyfriend, or even to Andy. And Bobby doesn't like to talk unnecessarily in the first place, so it's not like he's going to have lengthy heart-to-hearts with his boss.

Dean's alone. And it sucks.

He has that number that Andy gave him. Gabriel. But he has no idea who Gabriel is, whether calling him will be a mistake or not, and…and Dean doesn't really want Cas to stop talking to him. What if Gabriel is his boss? Or, Christ, Dean doesn’t know, his boyfriend or something? Cas doesn't seem the type to have a boyfriend (not judging solely by his voice, anyways), but Dean's been wrong before. And he doesn't…he doesn't want to give up the closest thing he has to a friend just yet. He's only been in New York for a month, and he's…he just doesn't want to be completely alone. Not yet.

"You are thinking."

Dean can hear the question in Castiel's voice, but he doesn't open his eyes. There's little point – all he's going to see is his off-white ceiling. Sometimes, though, he almost gets the feeling that Cas can see him. It's weird and a little off-putting, but it's also totally insane, so every time it happens Dean has to shake it off and file it away as just another way in which he's being paranoid and fucked in the head.

"Of course I'm thinking," Dean counters. "People think all the time." It's got to be like eighty-seven degrees outside, but Dean's got his oldest, most comfortable blanket tossed around his shoulders like a cape, and every so often he wishes that he had another, just for his legs and feet. Bringing up the issue of the air conditioning with Andy had gotten him a blank stare and then a stuttered "I'll look into it", but so far there hasn't been any follow-through, and it's getting to the point where Dean just doesn't care. It'll be a bitch to deal with in the winter, but he's pretty sure the heating works fine, so, at worst, his apartment will just be lukewarm, as opposed to toasty.

"You are thinking about something in particular. May I ask what?"

"Not a what." Not really. Dean digs his toes into his comforter and hums. "Just…thinking about being here. The apartment." You.

"Why?"

Dean sighs. It's the most god-awful sound he's ever made, and he immediately scowls up at the ceiling, despising himself for being such a fucking pussy. Sam's gone, doing his own thing all the way across the country, and he's got weird neighbors and a stoner landlord and a boss who probably thinks he's going to have a mental breakdown any day now. Dean just…has to deal with all of that.

It would be easier, he thinks, if he had a face to put to Castiel's voice.

"Because there's nothing else to think about." That's a lie. Dean turns onto his side, huffing softly. Now or never. "Cas?"

"Yes, Dean?"

"What do you look like?"

There's a long silence, and for a moment Dean thinks he's actually offended the guy. Are there any fringe religious sects that think physical descriptions are bad? Like how there are some people who think that taking a picture of someone steals their soul? The last thing he wants to do is to drive Castiel off…not that there seems to be much chance of him ever leaving. Dean tried to open Castiel's front door, the other day…not out of any real desire to break into the apartment, but just to see if the guy was home, or if he'd snuck out while Dean was at work. But the door had been locked, and when Castiel had next spoken to him, the subject hadn't come up at all.

"Why do you want to know?"

Dean pushes his face into his pillow. It smells like the cheap shampoo that he buys from the online grocer and has delivered to his apartment. Sort of a peppermint smell. "Because you're my neighbor. Because I talk to you more than anyone else in this whole damn building. Because…you're sort of my friend, I guess." He isn't sure what else to call Cas, who listens to Dean talk and somehow fits together everything he's said and comes up with solutions to problems Dean didn't even know he had. Cas, who never talks about himself. The only time he mentions his own life is when Dean asks a direct question about it, and even then he's pretty good at giving answers that don't actually mean anything.

"…It has been such a long time since I was able to look in a mirror." What is that supposed to mean? "Compared to much of my family, I was…am…I believe you would call me 'scrawny'. I have blue eyes. And dark hair. I am not terribly interesting to look at."

Well, okay, there goes Dean's "judging by voice alone" theory. So, Castiel is compact instead of big and bulky. He can picture it. His brain conjures up a generic sort of face, eyes that are huge and almost luminous, thin shoulders, short hair. Buzzed, even. Castiel probably has one of those baby faces. Dean's willing to bet he never has to shave, either. That he's the type of guy who will look young for the rest of his life.

Then again, he's been wrong before.

"You don't know that," Dean hears himself say. Shit. "I mean…maybe a lot of people would find you interesting, if you got out more."

"I am not the type to 'go out'."

"Yeah, I've noticed."

Castiel falls silent, and Dean…feels a little bad. It's not like he isn't telling the truth, but still. Maybe it's not something Castiel can do anything about. Maybe he's paralyzed, or he's got a crippling phobia of crowds. Something. Something keeping him from getting to know people normally. And Dean might be totally wrong, again, but that's still…depressing.

"I have green eyes," he says. "Brown hair. Uh, I guess I'm taller than average. Six-three. But my brother is six-six." Growing up in the Winchester household had been an odd evolutionary arms race, as far as height went - a race that Sam had won by dint of springing up five inches in one summer. He'd been miserable, but he'd gained the rights to lord his superior height over his older brother whenever he wanted…although that had gradually tapered off as Sam reached the age where he began to value diplomacy over brute force.

"Why are you describing yourself?"

Dean huffs. "Uh. Just…returning the favor? I mean, you've never seen me, either."

"Ah." Castiel sounds perplexed. Dean wonders what's so confusing about the whole give-and-take process. Unless Castiel has some sort of peephole installed in the wall somewhere, which Dean kind of doubts. He thinks that's the sort of thing that people would notice, after a while.

Then again, maybe that's why the apartment was so cheap. Creepy neighbors.

"Dean?"

Dean grunts, a noncommittal sound.

"We are most definitely…friends, then?"

He squints up at the ceiling. He'd said it without really thinking about it, but what makes a friend? Dean considers Ash to be his friend, but how much does he actually know about the guy? Do you have to be aware of someone's life story before you can say they're more than just some person you know? Some person you see on occasion?

Too many questions. And Cas is the only person he talks to on a regular basis, anymore. He thinks that simplifies things.

"You're the only person who doesn't treat me like I'm going to break if you say something the wrong way. So…yeah, I mean it. If that's okay with you."

Dean waits. He's not willing to say "with bated breath", because it's not like he and Cas are going to be BFFs forever. Just neighbors. Two guys who don't really like interacting with people, or going outside. But…having at least one person here, in this huge and unfathomable city, just one person who cares whether he lives or dies…that'd be nice.

Castiel makes a soft noise, and Dean realizes that he's sighing. He sounds relieved. "Thank you, Dean."

"You're welcome." Dean frowns, and then lifts his hips and shoves his hand into his right pocket. Something is stabbing at his hip and it's getting annoying. He ends up fishing out his car keys, a paper clip (where the hell did that come from?), and…

A slip of paper. Worn, and obviously been through the wash a few times. The ink on it is smeared, but still mostly legible.

Gabriel.

It's the number that Andy gave him, crumpled and smudged, but still there. Fuck, he thinks it might even be local, though he isn't entirely sure.

The room suddenly seems about ten degrees colder than it was before. Dean shivers, and tries to pull his blanket tighter around his shoulders. He isn't sure if this is actually from the faulty air conditioning, or some kind of weird, psychosomatic reaction to finding the phone number again. Because a part of him is desperate to know what's going on with Cas, why no one will talk about him directly, why he never talks to anyone…but he also doesn't want to ruin what he already has.

Dean rubs his forearms, trying to get rid of the chills running over his skin. It feels like he's been shoved into a bucket of ice.

"Hey Cas," he says cautiously. "Who's Gabriel?"

But he doesn't get a response. Just that horrible, all-pervasive cold, and the vague idea that he’s in way over his head.

But his cell phone is on the nightstand. And he wants to know.

~

Dean makes the phone call, but it takes him a good week to do it, and he spends most of that week freaking out as quietly and subtly as he possibly can. People notice anyways – Bobby, especially. Bobby quietly, gruffly gives him permission to go home early when Dean starts needing more than a few minutes in the bathroom to calm himself down. He's not being paid for his time off, but Dean would rather be sane (or at least calm) than rich. Or…slightly less poor, as the case may be.

When Gabriel picks up the phone, Dean gets the immediate impression that the guy is a douchebag. He answers on the third ring and greets Dean, lazily, a long and drawn out "Hello?"

Dean clears his throat. "Uh. Gabriel?"

"The one and only. Who's this?"

"My name's Dean Winchester…I live in Gallagher Apartments."

There's a long pause, and then a barely audible "Fuck." Dean presses the phone harder against his ear (not that it helps any) and casts a wary glance towards his bedroom. The whole apartment is freezing, and all his blankets are piled on his bed, but Dean doesn't want to go where Castiel is more likely to hear him. As it is, he's hoping that the guy is…out, or something. Working. Not listening in on Dean's conversation with a dude who may or may not ruin…well, everything.

"Andy gave you this number," Gabriel says, and Dean snaps back to the present. He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. His vision is starting to blur a little, but maybe he can head it off if he just…doesn't look at anything.

The blackness behind his eyelids is soothing, but empty.

"Yeah, he did. He told me I should talk to you, but he didn't tell me why."

"Figures. I'm surprised he thought to give you my number at all. My brother lived in Gallagher Apartments." Gabriel laughs. It isn't a terribly pleasant sound. "Let me guess, no one's willing to talk to you about him?"

Dean runs his free hand over his forearm – he has goose bumps. His stomach feels weirdly hollow.

"Who's your brother?" he demands (even though he knows, already, how could he not?), and Gabriel makes a soft noise, a contemplative noise. It's a deep breath, or a sigh, something that's vaguely sad.

"I'll give you three guesses, and two of them don't count."

"Your last name is Angioli, isn't it?"

"Close. Pazzi, but that's just because when Daddy disowned us I decided that I didn't want his name anymore. Castiel never stopped hoping, though."

Dean cautiously opens his eyes again. He thinks he sees something, cloudy and thin, out of the corner of his eye, but when he turns his head to look it isn't there. But it doesn't fill him with any sense of dread, or impending doom. It isn't his brain conjuring up an image of roaring flames. It was just…there.

"I'm getting the feeling that you're confused."

Dean presses the heel of his hand against his right eye, the pressure comforting, but painful. Gabriel still sounds like the worst kind of asshole, like after he hangs up he'll have a good, long laugh at Dean's expense. But he's the only resource Dean has access to. "Yeah. Yeah, that's one way to put it."

"Tell you what. I'm meeting a client on the seventeenth, but I can cut it short and swing by Gallagher's around…six or six-thirty. Crowley can handle another night in jail."

Another night in jail? Dean's assuming that that means Gabriel is …something to do with law, or politics. Maybe even a lawyer. Sam would have a field day, trying to get some first-hand knowledge of the job, but Dean just can't bring himself to be excited for it. He'll support Sammy in just about everything he does, but other people? Other lawyers? He'd rather not get involved, thanks.

"Six-thirty works for me," Dean says, making a mental note of it. He's almost positive that Bobby will let him clock in early…not that Bobby seems to care about Dean keeping to a set schedule in the first place. Singer Salvage and Auto Repair continues to thrive in New York only by some kind of miracle, in Dean's mind – there are places nearby, chain stores, that are faster, with friendlier staff (or, at least, staff that don't call you an "idiot" whenever your check engine light comes on), with actual, clean offices instead of some guy's living room…and yet Bobby manages to stay in business by dint of just knowing everybody. Some of the people who walk into Singer Salvage are brandishing cars worth more than Dean's probably made in his entire life, and they trust Bobby (and, by extent, whoever he employs) to make sure that everything runs smoothly.

And everything does. Somehow, things always seem to work out. They get the right parts on time, they get customers who pay well and who are willing to put up with abuse, and Bobby Singer just rolls through all of it like a well-armed tank.

“Great. Sounds great. I’ll see you then.” Gabriel sounds distracted. Dean imagines that he’s got some hot girlfriend waiting for him…the people with the highest-paying jobs are often also the people with the most beautiful lovers.

He feels less bitter over that than he used to. Maybe he’s maturing. Or something.

“Hey,” Gabriel says, and Dean pauses, thumb hovering over the end call button.

“Yeah?”

“My brother.”

Dean isn’t sure where Gabriel wants this to go. He’s not giving Dean an awful lot to work with. “Yeah? What about him?”

“Have you…seen him?”

Which really only cements the idea that Castiel is some sort of people-phobic recluse in Dean’s mind, because Gabriel sounds hesitant and a little hopeful. Like he’s waiting for an answer that might scare him. Dean shrugs, more to himself than anything else.

“No, we’ve just talked. He never comes out of his apartment. Which, seriously, you might want to call him and convince him to talk to someone about that, because it’s probably not healthy…living off of online deliveries or whatever it is he’s been doing.”

Gabriel falls silent for a long moment. So long that Dean, for a second, thinks that he might have hung up. But no, the call is still connected.

And then Gabriel says, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s…a good idea.”

His voice has a quiver to it that wasn’t there before. Dean doesn’t recognize it, or what it’s supposed to mean – he assumes it’s worry. He’d be worried, too, if Castiel was his brother. Dean’s not sure what he’d do, if Sam decided to cut himself off from the rest of the world, but he’s absolutely sure that he wouldn’t let it continue.

“So, I’ll see you on the seventeenth,” Dean says, and he can imagine Gabriel on the other end of the line, slowly shaking his head. As if coming out of a daze.

“Yeah. The seventeenth. See you then.”

And then Gabriel hangs up.

Dean stares at his cell phone for a long time, wondering if he should have said something else. If he should have told Gabriel that he had seen Castiel…because, occasionally, he gets the feeling that they’re closer than he assumes. Like Castiel knows him better than Dean thinks. And he really, really wants to see the guy. Wants a face to put to that voice, not just a vague description.

Maybe he’ll ask Gabriel if he has a picture.

~

Gabriel is a short guy with longish, light brown hair and laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. When he smiles, it looks more like a smirk, but Dean doesn’t immediately sense any ill intent behind it, and he’s been protecting his little brother from bullies almost his entire life, so he considers himself a pretty good judge of which smiles mean “hi, I’m friendly” and which mean “I’m planning on punching your face in after class”.

He’s wearing a suit, but not a fancy one – sort of regular and dependable-looking. His tie is knotted loosely at his throat, like he can’t stand to have it crowding him, but when he steps up to shake Dean’s hand his grip is firm, and he stands close enough that Dean can feel how much heat he exudes. He’s like a furnace. Sam is that way, too. At least, he was when he was little, when he used to crawl into bed beside Dean after he’d had a nightmare and needed comfort.

Gabriel’s shoes are the only things that tell the truth about him. They’re scuffed up and dull. Good, solid working shoes, but not fine Italian leather. It’s the suit of a man who cares about his looks, but the shoes of a man who has more pressing things on his mind.

He smells like peppermint and chocolate. Dean very carefully doesn’t breathe in, and Gabriel smirks at him.

“Gabriel Pazzi,” he says. “Pleased to finally meet you.”

“Likewise.” Dean doesn’t mean it. Gabriel obviously senses this, but he still doesn’t immediately let go of Dean’s hand, and he doesn’t step back far enough. The noise of passing cars fills Dean’s ears. He doesn’t want to let Gabriel into his apartment. He wants things to go back to how they were before, wants to just keep talking to Castiel through his wall, picturing what he looks like when he can’t sleep at night, going to work at Singer Salvage…

But things change. Things always change. And Dean is too curious, now, to let it go.

“Shall we go inside? It’s a bit hot out, today.”

“It’s freezing inside, though.” But Dean leads Gabriel into the building, regardless. Gabriel immediately makes a soft noise of discomfort upon crossing the threshold.

“Jesus! It’s like the ninth circle of Hell in here.”

Dean makes for the stairs, casting a glance back over his shoulder. He can’t help but smirk, a little bit. “Told you. The air conditioning is always on the fritz. I keep telling Andy about it, but he never gets around to fixing it.”

“The air conditioning,” Gabriel repeats. He sounds skeptical, and Dean pauses almost at the top of the stairs, frowning.

“Yeah. What else would it be? It’s not like it’s cold outside.”

Gabriel shoulders past Dean to stand on the landing, yet he doesn’t turn around to face him. There’s tension writ large in his clenched fists, but Dean can’t understand why.

Dean leads Gabriel to his apartment, invites him inside and offers him the couch to sit on while he himself stands uncomfortably against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, waiting. Waiting for an explanation, for a fucking clue, for just…something.

“All right.” Gabriel straightens his shoulders. The apartment feels twice as cold as the hallway outside; Dean exhales, and he can see his breath. “I didn’t want to say anything over the phone. I just…wanted to see for myself. And if I told you…well. You’d have freaked out or told me I was full of shit, and hung up.”

“Freaked out why,” Dean demands. He feels odd. Like he’s looking through a dim window at his own body. Hollowed out, fragile, like the next thing that Gabriel says might shatter him into a million pieces.

Gabriel folds his hands in his lap, and a shadow of some recent pain passes over his face.

“Because my brother died about nine months ago,” he says, and the bottom drops out of Dean’s stomach.

Your other brother, he thinks, almost desperate. Castiel hasn’t mentioned anyone, hasn’t even mentioned you, but it’s entirely possible that he has a few brothers. Hell, maybe a few sisters. Some people have big families. That they never mention.

And Gabriel is just staring at him, like he can sense what Dean’s thinking, can tell how much he doesn’t…he can’t believe that…

“Castiel,” he croaks, and prays that Gabriel will look at him like he’s an idiot, will say no, of course not, Castiel is alive and well and living next door to you, I’m talking about my other…

“Yeah,” Gabriel says, and Dean raises his hands, covers his eyes with his palms, and feels a cold chill sweep over his skin. He wants to think that it’s just the shock stealing over him, but there’s a part of him that thinks it’s something else, something in the room, that’s making him feel like someone’s rubbed ice on the back of his neck.

“How?” He can’t get out much more than that. He wants to ask the obvious question, “if your brother is dead, then who have I been talking to?” or maybe “do you believe in ghosts?”, but he thinks that maybe…maybe he doesn’t want to know. Maybe this whole thing has just been a hallucination. Would that be better? Would that be somehow saner?

He rubs his eyes, and tries to ignore the threat of panic that crawls up the back of his throat, that flickers at the corner of his vision. He struggles to take a deep breath. Another. Another.

“He was murdered,” Gabriel says. “They never caught who did it…Castiel didn’t go out much, and he didn’t invite people back to his place. No one saw what happened. One day he was going down to get his mail, and then…” Gabriel pauses, biting his lip. As much as he seems like a smug bastard, Dean can see real pain in his expression, can hear it aching in his voice. “He was stabbed. Look, there are details I don’t want to go into. You’d be better off asking my brothers what happened, they don’t…have as much trouble thinking about it. But please, tell me. Have you…seen something? Heard something?”

He wants me to say “yes”, Dean thinks. If I say “yes”, and he tells anyone, I’ll have to leave. I won’t be able to take it, all these people, people who aren’t family, looking at me like I’m crazy. Even if I am, I couldn’t take it. But if I say “yes”, maybe…maybe he’ll understand. Maybe he’ll believe me. If nothing else, maybe it’ll give him some peace of mind.

“I’ve got a picture,” Gabriel says, and begins to dig through one of the inner pockets of his jacket. Dean watches him, not knowing what to say – does Gabriel carry this picture of his around everywhere? Does he take it out and look at it, when no one else is around? “Here.”

A Polaroid – Dean wasn’t even sure they made those anymore, but apparently they do – is shoved in his direction. It’s not exactly new, but it’s probably from within the last ten years, and Dean takes it with shaking hands. He tries to hide how unsteady he is, and holds the Polaroid carefully between his fingertips.

The picture is of a young man, maybe in his mid-twenties. He’s wearing a trench coat that makes his shoulders look twice as broad as they actually are. There’s another man standing beside him, light-haired and solemn looking, and their arms are thrown around each other’s shoulders. They look happy, but discreetly so. Dean looks at the curve of the first man’s jaw, at his dark, mussed hair, at his shoulders – not exactly thin, but far from broad. He’s tall, and lanky, and he has a mouth made for kissing. Dean wishes the Polaroid was in color, but even without it his brain fills in the missing details: dark brown hair, always messy no matter what he does to it, and bright blue eyes, and pink lips.

This is Castiel.

Dean folds his hands in his lap, careful not to crumple the Polaroid. That chill isn’t lessening at all. He thinks he hears something, something that sounds like “Please don’t,” but maybe that’s just his imagination. Like…like Castiel has been?

But if I tell him “yes”, he realizes, I won’t have this to myself anymore.

“No,” Dean says. There’s a part of him, the part that isn’t selfish or an asshole, that reminds him that what he’s doing is probably going to crush Gabriel’s hopes. Even if the guy isn’t in the habit of believing in…

In ghosts.

But he is selfish, and he is and asshole, and for the past few weeks Castiel has been the only thing that’s been keeping him functional. He owes Castiel.

I owe a goddamn ghost, Dean thinks. He doesn’t say anything more as Gabriel first stares at him, and then begins, slowly, to stand up from the couch. His gaze drifts towards the door, as if he’s desperate to leave.

“Even after everything you’ve already said,” Gabriel murmurs, “you’re still going to deny it?”

“I’m not saying I’m denying it.” Dean is careful to keep his tone neutral. “But I am saying that I think…” He swallows. “…I think it’s what he would have wanted.”

“What? To be forgotten by his family? For his killer to walk free? For the only brother who ever cared about him to wonder, for the rest of his life, whether he could have done something? Whether he could have stopped all this from happening? Is that what Castiel would have wanted?” Gabriel narrows his eyes. “You never even knew him. You didn’t know he existed until you moved into this apartment. You’re a dick, you know that? You’re a dick and I hope you get ball cancer and die.”

Dean doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have anything to say. Gabriel’s is right – he’s being a selfish dick and there isn’t really an excuse for it. He isn’t about to tell Gabriel that it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for him to leave the apartment without some serious psychological pumping-up. He isn’t going to tell Gabriel that, when he talks to Castiel, it’s easier for him to block out all the terrifying things that could happen to him (electrical fires, gas leaks, what if he leaves the stove on, what if there’s a faulty wire in the wall, what if his phone sparks, what if, what if), and instead focus on all the things that are happening.

He isn’t lying to Gabriel because he’s worried about not being believed.

He’s lying to Gabriel because he doesn’t want Castiel to leave.

“Please go,” he whispers. He wonders if Castiel can hear him. If ghosts have to follow the same rules as humans, or if they only have to follow some of the rules, or, maybe, none at all. Either way, it’s Gabriel, not Castiel, who is scowling at him.

It’s Gabriel, not Castiel, who leaves.

Dean sits down on the couch after Gabriel is gone. He imagines he hears the sound of worn, unpolished shoes on the stairs leading down and outside. He imagines he hears a door slam.

He imagines he hears the words “thank you,” but he can’t be sure if it’s what he actually hears, or just what he wants to hear.

It isn’t until later that Dean realizes that Gabriel has left the Polaroid behind. He stands next to the window as he holds it, examining it under the harsher light of day, but he still has trouble seeing a man that someone would want to murder. All he sees is a face that, finally, he can say belongs…belonged…to a friend.

But he isn’t even sure about that, anymore. Because even if ghosts are real, and this isn’t some figment of Dean’s imagination…friends don’t lie to each other. Not like this.

Right?


	3. Chapter 3

Dean gets a call from Bobby the next day.

This is odd in a number of ways. There is, of course, the fact that it’s Dean’s day off, and there’s also the fact that Bobby calls at ten in the morning, which, while not totally unreasonable, isn’t exactly ordinary, either.

Luckily, Dean is both aware enough and coherent enough to answer the phone.

"H'lo," he mumbles. His back hurts. His head hurts. _Everything_ hurts, and he realizes why as he tries to roll over and finds that he never actually made it to his bed last night. He's lying on his couch, legs curled up towards his body, and everything from the neck down hurts like hell. He thinks he must have gotten _some_ sleep, but it can’t have been very much – he vaguely remembers finally drifting off sometime around four this morning, but he sincerely doubts that he slept the whole six hours from then to now.

“You sound like hell.”

“Good morning to you too, Bobby.” Dean scowls down at his feet, tucked down into the gap between two cushions. He carefully extricates them, wincing at the pins and needles sensation of feeling returning to his extremities. “There a reason why you’re calling me on my day off?”

“Mind your manners, boy.”

“So,” Dean says, and swings his legs over the edge of the couch, wincing as his bare feet come in contact with the living room floor. Shit, even the _carpet_ is cold. “About that reason.”

“Ash has gone and made me a website.”

“ _What_?” Dean sits up a little straighter. He pretends he doesn’t notice the chill that sweeps through the room. “Bobby, you hate computers.”

“Yeah, and that’s what I told _him_. But, what’s done is done, so I told him to go ahead and put in a button that will let people ask questions.”

“Questions?” Dean seems to be asking a lot of questions lately. About work, about his neighbors…about himself. Is he really the kind of person who believes in ghosts?

Does he really have a choice, at this point, or is it something that he’ll just have to accept? He digs his toes into the carpet and then pushes himself up from the couch, ignoring the way his back, and his neck, and every part of his body that’s connected to his spine, it seems, protests at the movement. He tries vainly to work out some of the kinks from his spine, but all he gets is an unsatisfying creak of vertebrae and no relief whatsoever. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Does what it says on the tin. It’s a button, you press it, you ask a question. Then we answer it. I’m putting you in charge of that part, by the way.”

Dean gives up on trying to make all his limbs function normally, and without aching, and instead stumbles vaguely in the direction of the living room, and then the hallway, and the second floor’s tiny bathroom. If he doesn’t get something to drink soon he’s pretty sure he’ll turn into a pile of dust or something. And on top of that, he needs to shower. He was sort of too busy to take one, last night.

He shivers as he crosses the threshold from the short hallway to the bathroom. The chill has followed him from his own apartment, and he winces again as his feet touch the somehow impossibly colder bathroom tiles. “Me,” Dean repeats. “What do you expect _me_ to do?”

“You’ve got a computer, and you’re patient with idiots. That’s two points in your favor, although God only knows why you put up with it. Life’s too short for stupidity.”

“Bobby, I’m about as computer literate as you are.” Dean’s frowning as he pulls back his shower curtain, reaching for the faucet and turning the knob almost all the way to “hot”. More than anything else, he needs to get to the point where he no longer feels like his body is going to threaten to mutiny against him. “Look, I can’t do it, I need to –”

“I’ll let you work from home. If the idea takes off, I mean.”

Dean pauses. Steam begins to cloud the bathroom as the water continues to run, and there’s sweat trickling down the curve of his neck – it’s uncomfortable, but Dean doesn’t move.

Finally, cautiously, he asks, “You’d pay me for that?”

“Wouldn’t be an everyday thing, mind. I’m getting used to having a pair of younger hands do all the heavy lifting around here. But if there was a day, maybe even a few days during the week when you didn’t feel like coming in…”

Dean swallows. His chest feels stuffed full of some emotion that, objectively, he recognizes as gratitude…but he isn’t going to tell Bobby that, because Bobby will sigh gruffly and then tell him he’s an idiot, and it’ll just be awkward. “You’ll lose money.”

“You don’t have any guarantee of that. Besides, think back to what I told you on your first day, son.”

Dean smiles…or at least, he tries to. “Hand me the jack, you idiot?”

“Smartass. Told you we’d discuss your arrangements. Well, here they are.”

“I thought you letting me work for you in the first place was the arrangement.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re an idiot.”

Dean takes a deep breath; steam fills his lungs, and the feeling in his chest swells. It’s a forceful, stupid feeling, gratitude, but it also grants him a sense of relief. “...Thanks, Bobby.”

“Yeah, well. Don’t go telling people how softhearted I am. Got a reputation to maintain.”

“You’re a delicate, wilting flower, Bobby.”

“ _Idiot_ ,” Bobby says, and Dean snorts.

“But really…thanks. For everything.”

Bobby grumbles – actually _grumbles_ – and then says something, mumbled and a little bit distant, something like, “Can’t take any more of this crap,” and then, with a huff, he finally hangs up. Dean flips his phone closed, staring at it for a moment, and then he carefully sets it down on the bathroom counter and begins to undress. He leaves his clothes in a pile on the floor; he’ll pick them up later. Even here in the bathroom, leaving flammable objects lying around is…well, dangerous.

He thinks about Castiel, and what he’s learned, as he steps naked into the tub and flips the tab that will turn the shower on. He thinks about Castiel’s face. He thinks about what Gabriel said – only that he was murdered, not why, or how. Dean wonders what Castiel was like in…in life.

He wonders which road he’s going to take: ghosts are real, or he’s just going crazy?

He closes his eyes as the hot water pounds down on him, his skin turning red from the force and heat of it. He opens his mouth and the water almost scalds his tongue, but he swallows anyways, greedily, his throat not caring whether the water is cold or hot, just wanting _water_.

In the shower is one of the few times when Dean feels safe. He recognizes, objectively, that if there was a fire and he was in the shower, it would probably make it more difficult for him to escape. But the presence of all this water is soothing. Illogically so, but Dean will take what little comfort he can get.

He touches his hips. His sides. Dean’s not a thinker, not really, but he still thinks _best_ when he’s relaxed, and he’s been existing in a state of perpetual panic since…well. Since he was four years old. This is one of the only times when some of that panic abates, just for a little while.

He’s pretty sure a psychiatrist would have something to say about his jerking-off-as-therapy, but he doesn’t have a psychiatrist, so whatever.

He doesn’t picture anything as he reaches between his legs, tugging gently at his cock. With nothing to immediately get him going, the pleasure seems somehow softer, like it’s coming at him from a great distance. He keeps his mouth open, his eyes closed, and everything is amplified. The sound of the water hitting his shoulders. The smell of the bathroom – air freshener (because Sam would have liked it, the smell of laundry-fresh linen in the bathroom), and soap. The feel of everything. His fingers curled around his dick in a slow, upward stroke. The rush of blood in his ears. The heat of the water. He leans against the wall of the shower, hissing at the sharp contrast of the steam and the cold tiles, but he doesn’t stop. He’s thinking.

He’s thinking about first moving in as his thumb rubs over the head of his cock. How he hadn’t known a single goddamned person in the entire city, and how he’d realized how stupid he was being, because New York is huge and fast and unforgiving, and maybe Dean could have handled that if he grew up a little differently, but he is who he is. Moving here was a mistake, yes. A mistake made in grief and frustration over his brother leaving. Over his inability to be _normal_.

He’s thinking about the first time he ever heard Castiel’s voice. Telling him he should buy a key ring. It had floated through the wall, at once airy and stern, like Castiel had disapproved of Dean’s disorganized life. Like he’d wanted to help.

He’s thinking, as the pressure builds at the base of his spine and the pleasure shudders over him like a liquid thing, about the time he asked Castiel what he looked like. _Because you’re my friend_ , he’d said, or something like it. Because Dean had wanted to have a face in his mind when he heard that voice drifting through his bedroom wall.

He has a face, now. He gasps into the spray, picturing eyes bluer than the sky in autumn, Castiel’s mouth – his lips had looked chapped, in the Polaroid. He didn’t look like the type to carry around chapstick, so he would be constantly sticking out his tongue to wet them. His tongue would be pink, like his lips, but darker, blood-flushed. It would slide along his bottom lip and then disappear back into his mouth.

Dean swallows a mouthful of hot water, then reaches up with his free hand and touches his thumb to his bottom lip. His mouth is blazing hot and his thumb feels cold in comparison. He pulls at his dick, long, steady movements of his fist, and hooks his thumb into his mouth, pressing it against the backs of his teeth. His thumb catches against his bottom lip as he moves it, pulling it down; everything is warm, now, everything. His cock aches. Not in a desperate way, but in a patient way. A _you’ll get there_ way. It’s the absolute best sensation for thinking, and Dean remembers how relieved Castiel had sounded, when Dean had said that yes, they were friends. Yes.

Pleasure curls around his spine and winds its way up into his chest – it’s a full body shudder of relief as orgasm overtakes him, but it’s different from the times he’s done this before. Normally he has no face in mind by the time he’s finished. Normally, when his eyes are closed, the only thing he can see is the darkness of his own eyelids. Normally, his brain is blank.

But now, Castiel’s face doesn’t leave him. The Polaroid stays with him as he doubles over, murmuring, “ _Cas_ ,” and stroking the last remnants of pleasure out of himself. He opens his eyes and watches his come get washed away by the pounding water, his breathing harsh.

He sees blue eyes, instead of darkness, and that scares him. Because it means that he believes in something that should be impossible. Because it means that, maybe, just maybe, he _isn’t_ crazy.

Because it means that maybe “friend” isn’t quite the right word for what Castiel has become to him.

Feeling boneless and loose-limbed, Dean reaches for the soap. He washes away the sweat and the dust, the lingering smell of motor oil, the feeling that, maybe, he’s done something today that can’t be taken back. He considers the idea that, if Castiel is a ghost, maybe he’s watching Dean right now. Maybe he’s been watching him as he’s been sleeping.

There are a lot of things to say “maybe” about, but very few things that are definite.

He’s quick about his washing. He soaps up and rubs down within a matter of minutes, shampoos his hair and gives it a cursory scrub before sticking his head directly under the spray and rinsing away every last trace of soapsuds. By the time he turns the shower off, he isn’t feeling any less conflicted, but he _is_ cleaner.

He pulls aside the shower curtain and steps out onto his bath mat, digging his toes into the green shag and then reaching for the towel rack on the wall.

But as he turns, he pauses. Stops completely.

Sitting on the counter, next to his cell phone, is the Polaroid. It’s burnt at the edges, as if someone had held a match to it for a second, maybe even less, but there’s no smell of smoke.

Dean reaches to pick it up, and then holds it, loosely, in his hands as he glances at the mirror, and sees the message written there. Written, like someone had taken their finger and dragged it across the glass, in the hot steam from the shower.

 _Forgive me_ , the message says. Dean stares at it for a long time. Eventually, though, the steam begins to dispel, and the mirror begins to uncloud, so Dean reaches over the counter and drags his palm through the words. All he sees behind them is his own face.

“All right,” he says. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll forgive you…” He stops. He can’t think of any reason _not_ to forgive Castiel – Dean thinks that, if he were placed in Castiel’s position, he would lie, too. Who the fuck would believe him if he didn’t? It’s not like sane people normally go around claiming to be ghosts.

Dean wonders if there have been prospective tenants who came before him, people that Castiel told the truth to, people who left without ever looking back. Dean swallows. The only reason he has for not immediately forgiving Castiel is his knee-jerk reaction to being lied to: anger, frustration, fear. Those are the things that are holding him back.

But Dean is a selfish person. And, on occasion, an asshole.

“I’ll forgive you if something good happens to me tomorrow,” Dean finally says. “I know it sounds…stupid, and it doesn’t make any sense, but just go with it. You owe me that much.”

No more messages appear in the rapidly clearing mirror. No ghostly hand lays itself beside Dean’s, still resting against the cooling glass.

But there is a voice, one that he thinks he could never in a million years disprove, that whispers into his ear, “If that is what you wish.”

It almost feels like someone has touched him, and Dean, suddenly self conscious, reaches for his towel and wraps it around his waist, and then cautiously pulls out his straight razor (he has never been able to use anything else – those electric razors are frightening, with their tendency to fall into water-filled sinks and electrocute people), and his shaving cream, and begins to get ready to face the rest of the day.

~

The call from Sam comes at 11:21 a.m., Tuesday, the nineteenth. Dean is taking Bobby’s advice and staying inside today, trying to figure out Ash’s new website. He has all the windows closed – it means that the apartment is freezing, but he would rather be cold than have the smell of smoke and exhaust in his home.

 _Home_. Funny, all the memories that word brings up. Mostly memories of motels, truck stops, his father’s car. This was back when the Impala still belonged to John Winchester, not Dean, back before his father showed up drunk and morose one night, a few days before Dean’s twenty-third birthday, and had wordlessly shoved the keys into Dean’s hand. A few weeks later he’d gotten into an accident, driving a huge, red monster of a truck, a bottle of 1984 Laphroaig acting as his copilot. Dean’s always thought of it this way: at least his father didn’t go out drinking Thunderbird or Mad Dog 20/20.

Now, though…now home is this apartment. Home is getting occasional phone calls from Sam.

Home is Castiel talking to him through his bedroom wall.

The phone rings; Dean glances at the clock in the upper right corner of his computer screen. It’s 11:21. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and flips it open without looking at the caller ID.

“Hello?”

The person on the other end takes a deep breath, and then exhales. Dean recognizes that sigh. “Sammy?”

A pause, and then, “How’d you know it was me?”

“No one sighs quite like you do. What’s up?”

“Oh, I…” The sound of Sam swallowing. Dean can’t hear anything in the background – no television, no traffic, but Sam’s voice does have a peculiar echo to it. Dean frowns, trying to puzzle it out.

“Are you in a bathroom?”

Sam laughs, short and sharp. It’s a humorless sound. “Doesn’t really matter. Um, Ruby’s gone.”

Dean freezes. “Gone? As in…?”

“What? Oh. Jesus, no, Dean. I broke up with her, that’s all. One of her friends told me, she…she wasn’t as clean as I thought. I didn’t want to believe him, but…” Sam falls silent for a minute, and then continues, sounding determined, and sad. “I found, uh, rolled up dollar bills in one of the kitchen drawers. Covered with…with powder.”

Dean bites his bottom lip. Half of him is ecstatically happy – maybe Sam won’t ever go back to the Midwest, or join Dean on the East Coast, but at least he won’t be under Ruby’s thumb anymore. But, on the other hand, Sam sounds _really_ broken up. Every so often his breath hitches, like he’s trying to keep himself from crying.

“You don’t have to say you’re sorry,” Sam murmurs, before Dean can say anything. “I know you didn’t like her.”

“I’m not sorry she’s gone,” Dean admits, “but I’m sorry you have to deal with it like this. Do you have a place to stay?”

“I’m in a hotel, for now, but I’m working on getting a place closer to campus. Maybe even on campus, who knows? It’s not like I need much more than a bed and a bathroom at this point.”

“Don’t say that. Things will get better.”

Sam takes a deep breath, and then lets it out again – not a sigh, this time, but something contemplative and distant. “What about you, Dean? Have things gotten better?”

Dean blinks. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, was you moving to New York as big a mistake as I thought it was? Or are you just…better?”

And Dean has to think about it, for a minute. When was the last time he couldn’t go into work? Even on the bad days, he’s managed to drag himself out of the apartment, no matter how stressful it gets. When was the last time he hesitated to answer his cell phone out of fear that it would somehow malfunction and explode directly next to his ear?

When was the last time he looked out a window and saw flames instead of a clear sky?

“Dean? You still there?”

“Yeah.” Dean shakes his head, staring at the computer screen. It doesn’t give him any answers. Sure, there are still days, even whole weeks, where he feels like everyone and everything in the world is out to hurt him. Days when he has trouble turning on an overhead light, let alone a stove or a microwave. But… “Yeah, I’m still here. I’ve been…I’ve been really good, Sam.”

“Seriously?”

“What, is that so hard to believe?”

“No, it’s just…surprising. People don’t just get over issues like yours, Dean.” He tries not to flinch at Sam’s casual use of the word _issues_. It might be true, but that doesn’t make it sting any less. “A lot of the time people with phobias and anxiety attacks need to get therapy, they need to go on medication…”

“I’ve told you how I feel about pills and shrinks.” The bottle of Xanax, the one that Ash had gifted him with before he’d moved, lies at the bottom of his nightstand drawer, closed and still almost entirely full. They had been necessary for the plane trip from Kansas to New York, but now…now they’re just sitting there, gathering dust. Sam doesn’t need to know any of that, though.

“I’m just saying it’s unusual.”

“I’ve had help.”

“Really? Who? Or…Dean, you haven’t started…?” Sam doesn’t say _drinking_ , but Dean hears it, and the unspoken word lingers there between them like a blockade. Dean swallows and tries to ignore the twisting feeling in his gut.

“No. It’s my…my neighbor. I told you about him. Castiel.”

“The one who talks to you through your wall?”

“That’s him.”

“Huh. I guess…well, I guess whatever works, right?”

“Whatever works,” Dean repeats. He glances towards his bedroom. He remembers the other day. Standing in his bathroom, steam wafting around him, he had promised Castiel that he would forgive him (that he would _believe_ , really, fully believe) if something _good_ happened today. He’s not about to say that Sam breaking up with Ruby is something to celebrate (not out loud, anyways), but it is…good. It’s good for Sam, who needs someone stable in his life. Someone smart enough to give him a swift kick in the ass when he needs it.

“Hey, I sort of need to…”

There’s silence on the other end of the line, and then a soft, understanding _oh_. “You’re working, aren’t you? I’m sorry, I’m interrupting…”

“Dude, don’t beat yourself up over it. I just need to go do something real quick. I’ll call you tonight, okay Sammy?”

“Okay. Just…Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful. I know you think you’re doing okay, but there’s bound to be a therapist somewhere…”

Dean doesn’t give Sam a chance to finish his sentence, only makes a rude noise into the receiver and then hangs up. He closes his phone, and then carefully places it on the desk next to his computer. A quick glance at Bobby’s new website shows that two people have already sent in questions – the way Ash has it set up, you have to pay a nominal fee in order to see an answer. It’s cheaper than actually bringing your car in for a checkup, but still, that’s real money that people are paying, just so that they can read an answer they could probably find elsewhere on the internet.

Dean is never going to underestimate the laziness, or the stupidity, of people ever again.

Absently, he minimizes the window and then stands up from his desk. The sound of New York traffic drifts in from outside, even through the closed window. Dean listens to it for a moment, then turns and heads for the front door. He grabs his keys from the table as he passes, locks his apartment behind him, and then heads downstairs. He has to pause in the hallway next to the kitchen – one of the light bulbs is flickering, and for a moment he’s worried that it will spark and shatter, but nothing happens. He takes a deep breath, then passes the kitchen and approaches Andy’s door.

His first round of knocking is ignored, but the second prompts the sound of shuffling from beyond the door, and the third round finally rouses Andy enough that he actually abandons whatever it was he was doing in order to unhook the chain lock and crack the door open a few inches. When he sees Dean, his eyes widen and he opens the door a little further. “Uh, Dean, my man. Can I help you?”

“I need the keys to the apartment next to mine.” Andy draws himself up, straightening his shoulders. He looks sort of like a Chihuahua trying to stare down a Great Dane. Dean doesn’t flinch.

“I…well, I can’t do that, it’s against my policies, and…”

“Andy,” Dean says softly. “Either give me the keys, or I’ll break the goddamn door down and pay for the damages.”

Andy swallows, visibly. “Just a second,” he says, his voice faint, and he disappears for a moment back into the haze of his own apartment. He returns a few seconds later, and holds out his palm, displaying the small, silver key. Dean grabs it before Andy can change his mind.

“Just don’t do anything stupid, man,” Andy says, and Dean shrugs his shoulders. This whole thing is beyond bizarre – he can’t guarantee anything.

He passes the flickering kitchen light without batting an eye, bounding down the hallway, and takes the steps back upstairs two at a time. He ignores his own apartment and goes straight to the door at the very end of the hall, the one that he has yet to see open. Dean wonders, as he fumbles with the key, what it was like for Castiel, in the first month or so after his death. Was he in denial? Did he honestly believe he was still alive? Or did he _know_? Did he accept what had happened?

Does he know who murdered him? Does he have a name, a face, something that Dean can take to the police?

The doorknob doesn’t turn when Dean jiggles it – no one has opened this door for a long time. No one has _lived_ here for a long time.

What Castiel is doing, after all, can’t really be called “living”. More like…existing.

His palms are sweating as he takes the key and carefully fits it into the lock – he has this crazy idea that maybe it won’t work, maybe this is like in those fantasy books that Sam used to read all the time when he was a kid. You have to have the key, sure, but you also have to be pure of heart, or some bullshit like that, and Dean is a selfish asshole and probably the furthest thing from a prince there is. But no, the key turns, maybe not easily but it _does_ turn, and the lock _clicks_ , and the doorknob, when Dean grasps it again, finally turns.

The door swings open, creaking softly, and Dean steps into an empty apartment.

There’s furniture still here, a couch and a living room table, both of them worn and ancient, but sturdy. Probably furniture that Andy couldn’t immediately sell off – Dean notices that there’s no television, no radio, not even so much as a toaster. No appliances whatsoever.

This apartment is set up exactly like Dean’s own, with a medium-sized living room, a short hallway leading to a bedroom, a tiny linen closet. None of the lights are on – the only illumination comes from two windows, one at either end of the living room. They overlook the street outside, same as Dean’s.

There’s a man, standing in front of one of the windows. Well, Dean uses the term _man_ , but no man was ever so still, so colorless. No man has ever been vaguely see-through.

Dean stares. For a long time, that’s all he does. He can’t move. He can barely _breathe_. Strangely, it isn’t panic that stills him, but…but something akin to _awe_.

Finally, the wavering figure turns around – as it moves, it leaves behind what Dean can only describe as _vapor trails_ , glowing remnants of itself that linger in the air for a moment, and then swiftly fade away.

The man’s face is achingly familiar. Pale as it is, bloodless, lifeless, Dean recognizes it, and he takes a cautious step forward.

“Cas?”

“I thought you wouldn’t come,” Castiel says. His voice is like the sound of someone sobbing into a glass bottle, deep and resonant, and almost indescribably sad. “I was _sure_ that you would not come. I am…pleasantly surprised.”

“I told you I would forgive you.” Dean’s voice feels thick. With what emotion, he isn’t sure. Relief, that he isn’t crazy? Horror, that he’s gone so far ‘round the bend that he’s started hallucinating _ghosts_?

Happiness at finally, _really_ meeting his friend? Terror that Castiel is actually something _more_ than a friend?

“I was not sure I believed you,” Castiel says softly. “Before you, there was a couple. A woman named Pamela, and her…her partner. They came to look at the apartment, and Pamela heard me. She promised that she would tell someone my story, but she never did. They left, and did not return.” He falls silent for a moment, and then continues, “I have grown wary of promises.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean says. He isn’t sure what else he _can_ say. Castiel smiles at him.

“I…am glad that you are different, Dean. I have come to enjoy our relationship. One-sided as it may be.”

Dean freezes. His heart pounds in his chest. _Oh God._ “Relationship?”

Castiel blinks slowly at him. “Ah. I apologize. Death grants…a certain perspective, but not tact. Our friendship.”

“No, no, I…” Dean swallows. “Were you there? Last night?”

“I am often with you, Dean. I…find it soothing to watch you perform all the activities that I once performed. Sleeping, eating, bathing.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I apologize for my frankness.”

“No, it’s just…you were _there_ ”

“Yes.”

“And you…heard me.”

“Please don’t leave.”

Dean reaches up, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off a headache. “I’m not going to leave, I’m just…this is _crazy_. I’m crazy, for thinking that…I don’t even know what I was thinking.”

Castiel moves a little bit closer, passing from the brilliant light streaming through the window into the relative darkness of the rest of the room. He continues to emit a soft glow, like he carries a bit of the sun inside of him. Dean doesn’t take a step back, but he almost wants to. Things that glow tend to worry him.

“Would you like to know why I was murdered?” Castiel asks solemnly, and _hello_ , that’s sort of a big step, going from “sorry I said your name while I was jerking off” to “revealing the secrets of the recently dead”…but Dean is curious. He has been ever since Gabriel wouldn’t tell him what happened, only that it was _bad_. That no one wanted to talk about it.

That glow is distracting. Dean squints, and then, cautiously, reaches out. “Can I…?”

“If you wish.”

And then Castiel reaches out as well, and their fingers, for the first time, touch.

They don’t touch in any physical sense of the word. Castiel isn’t made of flesh and bone anymore, isn’t actually _there_ , in the strictest sense of the word, but there’s _something_ there, something intangible but present. It’s like touching an electric current, or sticking your hand in a sunbeam. Castiel, contrary to everything Dean might have believed, is _warm_. A little tingly.

Dean moves his hand to Castiel’s face, his fingers drifting through the swirls of…of whatever it is that Castiel is made of. It’s like mist, but somehow prettier, and significantly less wet. Castiel’s eyes drift shut.

“I have told you that I come from a religious family,” Castiel murmurs. “I have told you, in brief, about my father, but little about my brothers. I am the second youngest in a family of six. You have already met my brother, Gabriel. The others are Michael, Raphael, Uriel, and…” Castiel’s voice trails off, briefly, and then resumes on a sigh. “…Lucifer. My father’s favorite, my little brother.”

Castiel turns away, then, causing Dean’s hand to drift through his cheek, like waving his fingers through smoke. The stuff that Castiel is made of wraps around his wrist, almost like a living thing, warm and electric. He realizes that, bizarrely, the apartment isn’t cold.

“It was Lucifer that caused my death,” Castiel finishes sadly. Dean gapes.

“ _What_?”

“He did not approve of my…” Castiel drifts off again, and then shakes his head, as if awaking from a deep sleep. “He called it my ‘lifestyle’. I believe Gabriel called it ‘being myself’. You must understand, my father does not ascribe to any particular religion, but he is a man of faith, and he holds the ideals of his faith very dearly. Lucifer followed in his footsteps.”

“Cas,” Dean says, and Castiel’s head snaps up. The use of the nickname, Dean thinks, still startles him. “Tell me what happened?”

“You said you would not leave.” There’s a desperate note in Castiel’s voice, half-mad with loneliness and grief. Dean understands it all too well. “Promise you will listen, and that you will tell others what happened here. My brother is not well. He needs help.”

“You’re telling me that the guy who killed _you_ needs help?”

“I made a mistake. I should have realized…Lucifer takes the scriptures so seriously. I made the mistake of telling Raphael…I thought that he would understand. He has always been so kind. Considerate. He is a doctor, you know.”

“Cas. What did you tell him?”

“That I did not think I would ever have children. That…that men were more pleasing to me than women.”

Dean breathes out, short, sharp. “You came out. To your super religious family.”

“Yes. And Raphael, I suppose, told Uriel, who told Michael…and, eventually, it reached Lucifer, and my father. They were…so disappointed in me. So angry. Lucifer told me that I had brought shame upon them. My father disowned me. I left without saying goodbye to my brothers, the ones who accepted me. It is my greatest regret.”

Castiel lapses into contemplative silence. Dean hears the blare of a siren drift in from outside, and finds that, strangely, he doesn’t feel threatened by it. “I’m sorry,” he says, when the quiet gets to be too much. “I can call the police, leave an anonymous tip…I want to help, Cas, I do, but I don’t know how.”

“You have done much already. You have spoken with me, kept me sane. You have…treated me as a human being. I only wish…”

“What?”

“I only wish that I could touch you. I am beyond physical sensation, but I still remember…what it was like. I find myself wanting to kiss you.”

Dean swallows. “Cas, in the bathroom…I’m sorry. I don’t want this to be weird. _Weirder_.”

Castiel smiles sadly. “Rest assured, I am quite beyond finding anything…weird. I am merely acknowledging a desire that I am unable to fulfill.”

“Why not?”

“Pardon?”

“Why can’t you…you know, kiss me?”

“I am incorporeal.”

“So?”

Castiel stares at him, perplexed; Dean bites his bottom lip as the ghost moves closer. It isn’t exactly _drifting_. Despite the airy energy that Castiel seems to be made of, there’s a definite sense of him actually physically moving himself. Like he still has the memory of muscles goading him along.

“Please do not move,” Castiel whispers. He leans forward.

Dean doesn’t close his eyes.

It isn’t a kiss in the strictest sense of the word, because there’s nothing there _to_ kiss…but, emotionally? It’s definitely a kiss. It’s like licking a battery, like shoving his face into a stormcloud, it’s the energy that’s released when lightning strikes, and Dean is surprised by how easy it is for him to stay calm. It feels like electricity, like something that might hurt him, but he knows, he _knows_ , that it won’t. The sensation drifts across his lips, over his cheeks, and Dean realizes that it’s Castiel’s palms, framing his face.

There’s no need to pull away for air, because Castiel doesn’t breathe, and because nothing is keeping Dean from doing so. He holds very still, breathing Castiel in – he smells like ozone and rain.

Slowly, the electric tingle on his skin lessens, and then, finally, vanishes entirely. Castiel pulls away, looking thrilled and sad all at once.

“It has been so long,” he says, and Dean nods.

“Almost a year. Did you…did you _feel_ it?”

“Not in the way that the living feel. But I remember it, and that is almost as good. Now. You have promised, Dean. You know my name. You know my brother’s name. The gun that killed me is here, under the floorboards beneath the sofa. My father is a carpenter…he taught his trade to Lucifer. It is why the police never found a murder weapon. It was hidden too well.”

“Jesus,” Dean says again. “Cas, this is big, this is…”

“I trust you. You are the only one who has ever stayed to listen.”

“I’ll come back,” Dean promises. “I will, I just need to…”

He just needs to figure all of this crazy shit out. Castiel nods solemnly, as if he understands.

“Go,” he says. “I will always be here.”

Dean swallows, and turns towards the door.

He flees, and doesn’t try to justify it as anything else.

~

It takes him almost a week, but Dean does, eventually, contact the police.

On day one, he calls Bobby to tell him that he won’t be able to come in for a day…maybe two, maybe three days, and Bobby, infinitely patient, reassures him that it’s been a slow couple of weeks (it hasn’t), and that he’s handled the job on his own for years, so he’ll be just fine (Dean doesn’t doubt this, but he’s also positive that his contributions have made the load easier for Bobby to bear). A nagging sense of guilt follows him throughout the day, until he finally logs on to Bobby’s website and finds six questions waiting for him. He reads the descriptions of faulty engines and mysterious clicking noises, examines the pictures that a few of the owners have been thoughtful enough to include, and gives his best guess on all of them.

It isn’t like actually getting _into_ a car, actually opening one up and finding what’s wrong, but these people, Dean thinks, are the people who are like him – people who are afraid to leave their houses for anything except work, people with some basic mechanical knowledge who prefer DIY jobs to having everything done for them, people who just don’t like to talk to _people_. People who, much like Ash, prefer the safe anonymity of a computer screen.

Dean hopes his answers help. If nothing else, he can always direct the questioners to the actual garage itself, and tell them that their best bet is to just suck it up and get their car serviced.

He makes himself spaghetti for dinner, but finds out, too late, that he doesn’t have any tomato sauce – only cheddar cheese.

He puts it all in a pot together and calls it macaroni. Then he sits on the couch, intending to just…rest, for a minute. He ends up falling asleep there, but it’s a restless, broken sleep. He wakes up four times in the middle of the night, and feels more tired upon waking than he did when he first fell asleep.

That’s day one. Day two follows the same pattern: answering the questions on the website, making dinners that provide him with no nutrition (and certainly no comfort), and falling asleep on the couch because he’s too…afraid? Nervous? Ashamed? Whatever it is, he’s too _something_ to go into his bedroom for any great length of time. Logically, he knows that, if Castiel wanted, he could project his voice out to the living room…but, for now, Dean is managing to maintain a thin veneer of control, and he wants to keep it that way.

Day four finds him running out of not only cheese, but also sliced ham and bread. He makes himself the very last sandwich possible, and, as he does, he thinks about what he told Sam. About himself. About Castiel. How he’s _better_. How he does things, now, that he never would have done if he had stayed in Kansas for the rest of his life, like…like using the stove to cook makeshift macaroni. Like going outside when he doesn’t have to. Maybe they seem like little things to other people but, to Dean, they’re _huge_. He literally cannot remember the last time he used a stove without panicking…and now it’s something that he only panics over _after_ , like his brain realizes the absence of panic and finds it jarring and distasteful after a lifetime of nothing _but_ neuroses and fear.

He thinks about the grocery store that he usually gets his food and household supplies from – he’d chosen them because, even though they were more expensive, they offered delivery services.

But there’s a smaller place just down the road a ways. A place that doesn’t deliver, but it’s so _close_.

After a few false starts and stops, Dean finally persuades himself into the Impala, and then, very carefully not thinking of how easy it would be for him to get into a fiery car crash, he drives down the street, and finds a parking space, and goes into the store to buy his groceries.

He finds out that they’re having a sale on Swiss cheese, which helps to offset the surge of terror he feels when he looks out one of the store’s windows and realizes that _holy shit_ , he’s outside, he’s in a place that isn’t his apartment or Bobby’s garage, and yeah, he’s nervous, but he’s also _here_. He’s made the decision and he’s following through with it.

He gathers his groceries, after he pays, and carries them to the car by himself, and then he drives home.

He spends the rest of the day curled up on the couch, drifting in and out of unhappy sleep, but when he wakes up he finds that he isn’t tired. He should be, after all the stress he’s gone through, but…he isn’t.

Day five finds him making grilled cheese sandwiches and contemplating what will happen if he… _does_ something. For Castiel. He can call the police. Calling the police is well within his comfort range, and he doesn’t even have to identify himself. He can just leave an anonymous tip, with just enough detail to make them believe he might be telling the truth. And it’s not like they might think he’s the murderer, either – he wasn’t even in New York nine, almost ten months ago. He doesn’t know Castiel’s family, he has no ties to _anything_ here…If he gets questioned, he’ll be able to answer, honestly, that he had absolutely nothing to do with Castiel’s murder.

He’s just the ear that happened to stay long enough to actually listen.

He falls asleep that night and dreams of fire, but he doesn’t wake up screaming. It’s something of an improvement.

And then, on the seventh day, he puts on his jacket, and he walks down the street to the nearest pay phone, and he calls the police.

He does his best to disguise his voice – he gets the feeling he’s not very good at it, but he hangs up before the woman on the other end of the line can ask him for his name and contact information. Then he walks back to the apartment, and he calls Sam.

He picks up on the third ring.

“Dean?”

Dean swallows. “Hey, Sammy.”

“Hey! Uh, I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s kind of a weird time…I mean, there’s this girl, Jessica, and I’m just trying to help her find her classroom before _my_ class starts…”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I just wanted to tell you that I went to the store today.”

Silence. And then, “ _Seriously_? Wow, Dean, that’s…that’s amazing.”

Dean shrugs, but he can’t help the small smile that pulls at his mouth. “I guess.”

“It’s a huge deal! Look, just let me help Jessica and then finish my classes for the day, and I’ll call you back at…how’s seven sound? Is seven okay?”

“Seven is okay.”

“ _Great_.”

A woman’s voice intrudes on the conversation, muffled, but…she has a beautiful voice. Dean wonders if Sam thinks the same thing. “Sam? I only have five minutes!”

“Sorry,” Sam says again. “Really, Dean, I am, but I will get _right_ back to you, okay? Promise.”

“Go,” Dean says. “Go on, Romeo, go help your damsel in distress.”

“I don’t think you call people who can kickbox you into unconsciousness ‘damsels’,” Sam laughs. “Or at least, not ‘damsels in distress’. She can take care of herself. Ah…All right. Later, then.”

“Later,” Dean repeats, and the other end of the line goes dead.

He holds his phone out in front of him for what must be several minutes, looking at the little measure that keeps track of the length of his call, still flashing on the screen. Finally, though, he holds down the _end call_ button until the phone turns off, and then he closes it, and deposits it on the living room table.

He sits down on the couch, pulling his knees up towards his chest, and he keeps thinking that the police will call, will ask him _how did this happen?_ and _why?_ , and all sorts of other questions that Dean doesn’t fully know the answers to…but they never do.

~

The police come. Dean hears them before he ever sees them, a great tramping of boots, a rattling of guns and badges, and the sound of Andy, apologizing, or maybe just trying to ask what’s going on, because surely he’d thought the investigation was over _months_ ago. Surely he’d thought that his life would be easier, once the memory of the murder…not smoothed over, not exactly, but faded, just a bit.

He opens his door, when the knock comes an hour and a half later. He lets the two police officers in – one man and one woman – and offers them a seat on his couch. He even gets out the good mugs, the ones that Sam had given him for Christmas almost three years ago (“Just in case you ever have company.”), and makes some shitty, instant microwave coffee. The man holds the mug between his palms and doesn’t drink. The woman, who introduces herself as Officer Carerra, politely sips the coffee and thanks him for his cooperation. They ask a few questions – where was he on January the eleventh, what was he doing, and does he have any proof? Does he have witnesses willing to corroborate his claims? Does he have receipts from that day, or does he have checks that he cashed?

Dean pulls out his receipt for the U-Haul that Rufus rented for him, and explains that he hasn’t been in New York for all that long – two months, maybe. Maybe a little bit less. Everything’s been happening so fast, he has trouble keeping track of it all. He gives Officer Carrera Ash’s phone number, and then Ellen’s, and tells her that either one of them will be able to confirm that he was in Lawrence, Kansas this past January. Working.

He’s careful not to mention Sam at all. He doesn’t want his little brother being dragged into this mess.

He’s also careful to ask what “all of this” is about – he’s not sure if he pulls it off, not sure if he manages the exact mixture of interest and horror that he thinks people must feel when they hear about terrible things happening so close to them.

The male officer – Officer _Bryant_ , that’s his name – tells him the “public safe” version of Castiel’s story. He was the second youngest son in a large, wealthy, prominently religious family. Castiel’s father is some sort of banker. His brothers are doctors, lawyers…priests.

Castiel had been a librarian. He had been murdered at approximately eight o’clock in the evening on January the eleventh. He had been shot once in the head – the wound that had actually killed him – and then shot a further three times in the chest. His apartment had been trashed. His books had been burned.

They may have found the murder weapon, Officer Bryant says, due to an anonymous tip. They’re going to pull fingerprints from the gun and take them back to the lab. They’ll probably know the identity of the killer by the end of the week.

“That simple?” Dean asks, and Officer Carrera smiles.

“Not always, but…sometimes. I’m just glad the family will finally be able to get some closure. We’ll catch the person who did this, sir, no worries.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Closure.” He doesn’t say anything more about it, but waits until Officer Carrera finishes her coffee and then offers to escort them from his apartment.

“We can show ourselves out,” Officer Bryant says, setting his mug down on the table and standing. He glances around Dean’s apartment, half pitying, half disdainful. “Thank you for your time, sir.”

Dean doesn’t say anything – he watches the two officers leave, and then slowly gathers up their mugs, and then takes them to the bathroom, and washes them. He doesn’t feel like venturing outside of his apartment to use the tiny communal kitchen. A part of him worries that, if he goes out there, his lie will be immediately revealed. The police will realize that he’s the anonymous tipper, that he got his information from a ghost – indeed, the ghost of the victim himself – and Castiel’s dick brother, as a result, will be thrown out as a suspect.

Dean’s not quite sure how accurate any of his worries are, but he’d rather be safe than sorry.

The investigation continues into the next day, but it isn’t until late Wednesday night that the police pack up all of their equipment and finally begin to leave. Dean sits on his couch, listening to the sound of the police cars pulling away from the apartment’s parking lot, holding the colorless Polaroid of Castiel in one hand, the key to Castiel’s apartment in the other. Twice, someone knocks on his door – the first time, Dean isn’t sure who it is, but the second time it’s Andy, saying, “Dean? Dean, are you okay? Talk to me, man.”

Dean doesn’t _talk to him_. He moves to his computer, briefly, in order to answer a few questions – the people he answered previously have posted reviews on another section of the website, and Dean idly reads through them. _Excellent service, prices are high, but worth it_ is followed by _Polite, helpful, told me exactly what was wrong with my car, and I never even had to bring the thing in_.

Dean is confused by a world that considers _him_ polite and helpful, but he goes along with it because there’s nothing else he can do.

He tries to go into his bedroom to lie down, changes out of his jeans and his jacket and into a t-shirt and some sweatpants and tries to sleep, but every few minutes he finds himself opening his eyes and straining his ears, trying to hear – something, anything. The sound of the police coming back, or maybe Andy coming to knock on his door again…

…or Castiel. He finds that he wants, more than anything, for Castiel to talk to him through the wall, like he used to, a little bit shy, but so, so happy to have someone to talk to, so utterly pleased with the fact that Dean just _exists_.

“Cas?” he whispers, and turns towards the wall, listening intently. “Are you there?”

He feels a chill sweep over him, almost like a palm running down the curve of his side, lingering at his hip and then fading away. It’s not quite the electric feeling that had accompanied Castiel’s lips touching his, and it’s not quite the smell of ozone and oncoming rain…but it’s something.

Dean rolls out of his bed, grabbing for his keys on the nightstand…the Polaroid, and then the key to Castiel’s apartment. He shoves everything into his pockets and then heads out into the hallway, barefoot and shivering in his thin white shirt. Everything is dark, and silent – Dean hadn’t realized just how much time had passed. He doesn’t have his cell phone or his watch, but he judges it to be around eight or nine in the evening.

It’s been a while since time got away from him. He rubs his palms over his forearms, skin prickled with goosebumps. He’s so cold.

He wonders if Castiel is colder.

He ignores the chill of the wooden floor, walking to the room at the end of the hall and then holding out his hand, looking at the key that’s digging its imprint into the soft meat of his palm. He stares at it for a long time.

Then, slowly, he fits it to the lock, and he turns it, and he pushes the door open.

Once again, Dean is struck by how _warm_ Castiel’s apartment is – at least, compared to his own. Dean doesn’t know much about ghosts, but he’s seen a few shows, back before he sold his television, and he thinks he remembers something about ghosts taking energy from the air in order to manifest, and that’s why rooms get colder when there’s a ghost present. But, with Castiel, it’s more like…he only fills _other_ rooms with cold. Like extending himself beyond the place where he died is…taxing.

“Cas? You here?” He isn’t sure whether he should be whispering or speaking normally – it’s not like the police are around anymore, and it’s not like Andy is up here to listen to him, but Dean still has the feeling like…like he’s disturbing something. Like he’s intruding on someone’s tomb. Which, if he thinks about it, he sort of _is_.

“I am here.” The words seem to have no real substance; they are everywhere and nowhere at once, and Dean reaches up and covers his ears, briefly, because the oddness of it is making his head swim.

The air near the window seems to shimmer, almost like seeing heat waves rising over a long stretch of tarmac on a summer’s day. Slowly, the shimmering resolves itself, first into a shapeless mist, and then into arms, legs, a head and a torso: Castiel, standing in front of the window. Dean has only been in the apartment twice, but both times he has entered to find Castiel _there_ – he wonders if the spot has some sort of significance.

“You’re always by the window,” he says, before he can stop himself. He only realizes afterwards that maybe it’s something that just…isn’t any of his business. Maybe it’s something Castiel would rather keep to himself, or something that he doesn’t want brought up. Dean watches the slope of Castiel’s shoulders, but they don’t slump, or stiffen. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, but it isn’t a strained silence, and Dean takes a step closer, and then another, until he’s standing next to Castiel, looking out the window. The street below them is bustling, as it is every evening, and so bright that it might as well be broad daylight out there. Dean remembers being seventeen and going out driving for the first time, utterly terrified and feeling sick to his stomach…but Sam had been in the front seat, with one hand resting on Dean’s forearm, reassuring him that nothing would happen. They had driven past the city limits, leaving the brightness of Lawrence behind, and Dean had parked the Impala underneath a huge oak tree while the night whistled and chirped and buzzed around them. The air had been full of pollen and the noise of insects as they’d gotten out of the car, and lain there in the grass.

This night is nothing like that one, but Dean can’t help but compare the two – there’s something that these moments share, some feeling. It’s a combination of terror and exhilaration that’s making Dean’s palms sweat and his lungs feel shaky and strange.

He starts as he feels something electric and insubstantial brush against his arm. _Castiel’s hand_ , he realizes as he looks down. Touching his forearm. Reassuring him.

“Does it matter,” Castiel asks, “why the dead do what they do?”

“Sometimes.” He thinks. Well, it matters what _Castiel_ does. After a moment, Castiel sighs – he returns his attention to the window, but his hand doesn’t move.

“This is where I died,” he murmurs. “I looked out over the street as Lucifer put the gun against my head. I am grateful that I received one last chance to see the world before I was taken from it.”

“The police said they’ve got fingerprints,” Dean says. “They’ll track Lucifer down and put him in jail, I promise.”

“It is not incarceration I want for my brother, but help.”

“Seriously? After what he _did_ to you?”

“He is sick. I believe the sick should be treated for their illnesses, not left to languish where their sickness might be allowed to consume them.”

“You’re a better man than I am,” Dean says, and he thinks that, if Castiel were able, he might have squeezed Dean’s forearm at that. Instead, all he feels is a brief increase in that odd electrical feeling.

He thinks about Castiel kissing him, and wishes it could happen again. No – wishes it could happen in some other time, or some other world, where Dean is alive and Castiel is alive too, and they first meet each other in the hallway, and as they grow closer Dean helps Castiel to deal with his family, helps him reconcile his religion with his desires, and…

“What do you believe happens, after we die?”

Dean blinks, and then shakes his head. “You’d know more about that than me.”

“A common misconception. What you see here is not…all of me. If it is souls that you believe in, then picture a human soul as being a puzzle. Upon death, that puzzle is smashed, and separated into hundreds of pieces. Most of these pieces go on to whatever it is that awaits them, but some of them…stay behind.”

“So you’re…the parts that stayed?”

Castiel nods. “I am not a whole person, but neither am I entirely inhuman. I remember…I remember everything from my life. I remember my hopes, my fears, my love for my family…but they are distant memories, and it is difficult to keep myself from fixating on one or two. Now that my brother might receive help, I’m not sure what to do with myself.”

“You’ll always have me,” Dean offers, and Castiel smiles.

“I…thank you. Dean.”

They stand in silence, side by side, Castiel’s hand on Dean’s arm, both of them looking out over the street. A man wearing a heavy jacket stops in front of the apartment building and pulls something out of the pocket of his coat. A moment later, the flare of a lighter splits the darkness around his face, and then dims into the smoldering light of a lit cigarette.

“I don’t think about stuff like an afterlife a whole lot,” Dean whispers. He feels as though, if he speaks any louder, he might disturb the odd peace that they have achieved. “But I guess I want to think that there’s a…you know, a Heaven. I mean, whatever anyone believes in, I just think it’s a nice idea, having someplace to go after you die. A place where you can relive all the good moments with everyone you loved.”

“It is a pleasing idea. I believe that is the afterlife that my family looks forward to.”

“You think something different?”

“I have not given it as much thought as they have. But…” Castiel pauses, and at first Dean doesn’t understand it – he doesn’t really have a reason to pause – but then he realizes that this is something left over from life. This is Castiel pausing because, were he alive, he would have needed to fortify himself with a deep breath. Like he’s about to say something shameful. “Do you believe in second chances? Do you believe that…good people are rewarded, after they die? That they are…allowed to come back?”

“What, like reincarnation?”

“Perhaps, but…I do not want to wait an entire lifetime. I would like to be able to…to see you. To touch you, before you die.”

Dean’s arm is suddenly cold – he looks down, and sees that Castiel has taken his hand away. He feels oddly bereft.

“I suppose it is a foolish desire,” he mutters. Dean wants so badly to touch Castiel’s shoulder, to comfort him, that it’s almost like a physical ache. He swallows.

“Hey. _Hey_. No one knows…what happens. I mean, even you said that you don’t know, and you’re dead. I’m not exactly sure how it would work, but…if there’s a God, or whatever, I’m sure it’s powerful enough to go back in time and put a bit of your soul in someone else.”

“I do not think that I am a good enough person to warrant such attention, but…thank you.”

“Hey, don’t say that. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe…maybe everyone already has a little bit of someone else in them. Maybe they’re just waiting for the other person to die.” Dean reaches up, pressing his fingers to his temples. “Christ, I’m not good at this philosophy stuff. My head hurts.”

“I appreciate your attempts to make me feel better, Dean.”

“My point is, don’t sell yourself short, Cas. If there is a God, it’ll see how good you are. It’ll give you another chance.”

“I hope you are right.” Castiel leans forward, prompting an odd moment of vertigo when the top of his head passes through the glass of the window, hanging out over the street. His immediate reaction is to try and reach out, to pull Castiel back, but…there’s nothing for him to grab. His hands pass through Castiel’s shoulder, like trying to hold on to mist, or a cloud.

“You needn’t worry,” Castiel murmurs. “I cannot leave this place. I am tied to this room.”

“Oh.” Dean doesn’t say it out loud, but he’s thinking it – _sort of like me_. Except…that isn’t really true anymore, is it? He managed to leave the apartment the other day. He’s been doing…yeah, not fantastic, but _better_. His panic attacks, the visions of fire, have been relegated, at least temporarily, to his dreams.

He used to be like Castiel. Now he’s just…him.

“You should go,” Castiel says. “You need your sleep if you are to work tomorrow.”

“Work?”

“You have not gone to work for several days.”

“Oh, that’s…me and Bobby, we have a thing worked out…”

Castiel stares at him, blinking serenely. Dean wants, desperately, to kiss him.

Instead, he raises his hand, and touches the curve of Castiel’s shoulder, trying not to disturb the insubstantiality of his form. He follows the faint lines of neck and the curve of skull, his fingers moving through the wispy image of Castiel’s hair, until finally he can bring his palm back down, and cup it to Castiel’s cheek. It’s like trying to touch a pool of water without ever letting your hand dip below the surface.

Castiel doesn’t say anything for a long time.

But then… “Thank you,” he murmurs. “You mean…more to me than you realize.”

 _What_ , Dean wants to say, _what is that supposed to mean?_. Is Castiel implying something? Is he…?

But Dean doesn’t get the chance to ask. His fingers twitch once, and Castiel, with a sad, lonely smile, begins to fade away.

 _Please come and visit,_ Dean thinks he hears, but he has no way of knowing for sure whether it was Castiel or his own wishful thinking, and he is left standing, next to the window overlooking the street, his arm extended, hand caressing thin air.

Alone.


	4. Chapter 4

Life goes on.

It’s too difficult to explain to people what’s been happening – even if Dean left out the part about Castiel being _dead_ , the whole thing sounds a little too much like an episode of one of those cop procedurals. So, when Sam calls later in the week (after work, because Castiel had…he had seemed _disappointed_ by Dean not going out to the garage, and the last thing Dean wants is to disappoint a guy who’s been through as much as Castiel has), the only thing Dean tells him is that Castiel has moved away.

“Away? You mean like… _away_ , or just gone on vacation?”

“I mean one-hundred percent not here anymore.”

“That’s…God, Dean, I’m sorry. I know he was helping you.”

“That’s life, Sammy.”

“So…now that he’s gone, are you going to…?”

Dean glances towards his bedroom, and then brings his feet up a little closer to his torso, trying to keep warm. “Going to what, Sam?”

“Get some therapy.”

“Sam, I’ve _told_ you…”

“I know, Dean, but…the way you talked about it, it made it seem like Castiel was the only thing that was making you feel better. I don’t want your quality of life being conditional.”

“ _Quality of life_? Who the fuck have you been talking to? Are _you_ seeing a shrink?”

Sam clears his throat. “Jessica, uh. She’s taking a few Psych classes.”

“Jessica, huh? Same Jessica you were showing around the campus?”

“Dean…”

“So, are you two dating? Going steady? Making plans for the future?”

“We’ve been on _one_ date. Stop trying to make this about me.”

“You’re the one who brought up Jessica.”

“Dean, I’m _serious_. You need help.”

“It’s easier for you to say that when you aren’t here.”

“I…” Sam trails off, leaving his sentence unfinished. Dean curls his toes into the couch cushion and resists the temptation to get up, to move around, to pace. It won’t help, and it might just be enough to make his vision go blurry and his breathing speed up. He doesn’t want to…to have an _attack_ while he’s on the phone with his brother. Finally, there’s the sound of Sam swallowing, and he says, “You’re right. It’s just…it’s easier to look at things objectively when I’m not…there. But I swear I’m only thinking of what’s best for you.”

“That’s the thing, Sam.” Dean smiles sadly. “People are only ever thinking of what’s best for themselves. Fact of life.”

“Dean…”

“Hey, I gotta go. Have to make dinner and shower, do all those normal people things. See? I’m not so bad off if I’m still showering, right?”

“Dean, when we were growing up dad told you that washing your hair in the sink counted as showering.”

“Hey, I stopped doing that, didn’t I?”

“Not until you were _ten_.”

Dean laughs. It feels forced, at least in part, but Sam doesn’t call him on it. “Leaving now.”

“Dean, please talk to someone. _Please_.”

“I’ll think about it.”

He hangs up before Sam has the chance to protest, then pockets his phone without waiting to see if his brother calls back. A moment later, the phone vibrates against his hip, but Dean doesn’t take it out again to look at it. Instead, he goes into the kitchen to make himself something to eat.

He still has spaghetti stuff left over in his minifridge, but he…he isn’t sure why, but he’s not feeling the leftover vibe tonight. He feels like making something, he just isn’t sure what.

He has a box of pizza rolls, though. He normally microwaves them, but…aren’t they supposed to be crunchier if you put them in the oven?

He carries the box out into the kitchen, setting it down on the counter while he roots around the various drawers and cupboards, looking for a baking sheet. There’s bound to be _something_ , isn’t there? Otherwise he might be relegated to the microwave after all, and for some reason that thought is more terrifying than the thought of using the stove. He doesn’t want to go back to the person he was, afraid of everything and always looking for excuses to do things a different way. Always microwaving soup instead of heating it up in a pot, always making sure to remove cigarette lighters from cars, always looking over his shoulder, scared that maybe today might be the day when all the fire from his past finally catches up with him. He doesn’t want to be that anymore. Castiel’s made things better, and Dean wants it to _stay_ that way.

He eventually finds a baking sheet in a cupboard over the stove, wedged between an ancient (and probably broken) coffee maker and something that looks like it might have been a blender at one point, before the local tinkerer decided to remove the blades and replace them with – and this is the weird part – what looks like plastic sporks. He drags out what he needs and shuts the cupboard door on the weird blender abomination, then starts to carefully arrange pizza rolls on the baking sheet. The diagram on the back of the box shows the rolls positioned in a neat circle; Dean had never bothered with aesthetics when he cooked the things in the microwave, but he figures the closer he follows the instructions the less likely he is to burn the whole building down.

Once the pizza rolls are arranged, all that’s left to do is turn on the oven and let it heat up.

Except he can’t.

He _can’t_.

Dean stands there, holding a baking sheet of pizza rolls in front of him like a shield, and he stares at the oven. He pictures the light going on inside when he pulls open the door – it’s been a long time since he used an oven, but that’s still how they work, right? – and he pictures putting the baking sheet inside. He pictures pressing the little button at the top, the one labeled _bake_. Pre-heating the oven to 450 degrees. The heat that will exude from the oven as it starts up.

And then something goes wrong – a wire sparks somewhere behind the oven, where Dean can’t possibly get at it, and the first thing he smells is just the sheer _heat_ , so it’s a moment before he notices the scent of burning plastic underneath it, and then, after that, the smell of burning insulation, and paint, and plaster, and by the time he’s able to dial 911 it’s already too late, the walls are blazing and the building is collapsing around him, and all because he was stupid enough to think that he could trust something as volatile and ravenous as fire.

Something clatters to the floor, but Dean is too busy trying to steady his breathing to take much notice. He stumbles backwards, leaning against the kitchen counter and counting, slowly, to ten. _One_. There is no fire. _Two. Three._ He hasn’t even turned the oven on. _Four. Five. Six._ Even if he had turned the oven on, there’s absolutely no guarantee that the wiring is faulty. _Seven. Eight. Nine._

There’s also no guarantee that it _isn’t_.

Dean slides down the side of the counter until he comes to a rest, sitting on the floor. He pulls his knees up towards his chest, staring up at the oven. There are pizza rolls scattered around his feet.

 _It’s just stress,_ he tells himself. _From the police being here, and from all this stuff with Cas…It’s just stress, in a few days it’ll be better._

Yes. In a few days he’ll be able to cook again, and he’ll go and visit Castiel, and Castiel will be…he’ll be happy for Dean, because he’ll see how much _better_ Dean’s gotten. All he needs to do is just…wait this bad patch out. Things will go back to the way they were a week ago. Soon. It’ll happen soon.

Won’t it?

Dean gives himself a few minutes to breathe (a few minutes turn into fifteen, which then turn into thirty), then slowly pushes himself up from the floor, and begins to clean up the half-defrosted pizza rolls scattered across the tiles. He dumps them all into the trash, then wets a paper towel in the sink and wipes up the grease as best he can. He rinses off the baking sheet and puts it back in the cupboard next to the mutilated blender. He checks, three times, to make sure that he never actually turned the oven on.

He goes to sleep, hungry and feeling as though he’s missing something important.

The next day, Dean thinks about calling Bobby and asking for another day off, but there’s a part of him that realizes that Bobby, for all that he’s apparently taken a shine to him, is still running a business. If Dean is consistently failing to pull his own weight, Bobby has every right to fire him. Bobby _should_ have fired him, weeks and weeks ago, when he’d first realized that Dean had more issues than the American Journal of Psychology.

He should have, but he hasn’t. Dean doesn’t want to disappoint Bobby any more than he already (probably) has.

So he puts on some jeans and a t-shirt that he doesn’t mind getting dirty, and he goes outside (flinching at the bright sunlight, at the cold, but pushing onwards), and then he drives himself to work. Bobby looks surprised to see him – looks almost alarmed, actually, and leads him into his house in order to shove a mug of coffee into Dean’s hands. Dean sips it, strangely grateful for the lack of sugar (the sharp bite of unadulterated coffee wakes him up, makes him grimace but also makes him open his eyes a little wider), and listens to the sound of Bobby’s ancient television droning in the living room.

“You all right, son? You look a bit pale.”

“I’m fine, Bobby.”

 _“…In other news, a ten month old murder might finally be on the brink of being solved. Police say that, due to an anonymous tip, they’ve managed to find the murder weapon in the case of thirty-three year old Castiel Angioli, the victim of a brutal shooting in January…”_

Dean freezes. His knuckles turn white as his grip on the ceramic mug tightens. Bobby stares at him. “Dean? Talk to me.”

 _Dean? Are you okay? Talk to me, man._

“I just…I need to…” Dean sets the mug down (carefully, because even in his haste he doesn’t want to make Bobby clean up spilled coffee) on the kitchen table, nudges it closer to the center, then shoves himself away and bolts for the living room.

 _“...leads in the Angioli case have been few and far between, but according to our inside source the police already have a suspect in mind based off of fingerprints lifted from the murder weapon: twenty-eight year old Lucifer Angioli.”_

“His brother, Ted?”

“That’s what it looks like, Patricia. Nothing has been confirmed yet, but let’s hope they catch the person who did this, shall we? Our hopes and well-wishes go with the Angioli family during this difficult time.”

Dean stops in front of the television, the picture grainy but unmistakable. The news show is displaying a picture of Castiel – not the picture from the Polaroid, but a picture where he looks…almost sad. Standing next to him is the same guy from the Polaroid. He has blonde hair, and blue eyes, and he stands apart from Castiel, like he’s afraid of him.

This must be Lucifer.

“Boy looks like trouble,” Dean hears, and he glances over his shoulder at Bobby, standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Castiel?”

“Whoever the blond one is. He’s got an air about him.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Dean murmurs. The station has already moved on to the next topic, and Dean has lost interest. Still, the news broadcasting all of this…it means that they’ve caught Lucifer, doesn’t it? It means that Castiel can finally…Dean isn’t sure. Rest in peace? Or at least be able to move on?

 _Move on means “leave”._

It’s like – and he knows it sounds cliché, but it’s true – a bolt of lightning hitting him. He realizes, suddenly, why he was able to use the stove two weeks ago but turning the oven on now sends him into paroxysms of anxiety and fear, why he’d woken up this morning and _hadn’t_ wanted to go in to work, despite what Castiel had said. He _knows_.

Because Castiel’s brother being apprehended might mean that Castiel will be able to finally leave. It means that whatever part of his soul is trapped here will finally be able to move on to whatever is waiting for it in the afterlife.

Dean will be alone again.

He’s _terrified_.

“Dean? _Dean_.”

“I’m okay,” he says, but it’s an automatic response, and it takes him a few moments to remember that he’s an adult, and he has a job to do. His father, flawed as he was, didn’t teach him to lie down and let the world steamroll over him. “I’m okay.” The repetition makes him feel a little bit better, and, after a moment, he rolls his shoulders and then turns away from the television. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t go apologizing for something beyond your control. Now go clean up your dish and get out to the garage. Got a clunker for you to look at.”

“A clunker? Gee, Bobby, I had no idea you cared so much.”

“Get your ass outside, boy.”

Dean swallows, not sure if he wants to laugh or scream, and tries to smile at Bobby. He isn’t sure he succeeds (not entirely, at least), but Bobby doesn’t call him on it, only steps aside so that Dean can go out the back way.

The car needs a complete overhaul – Dean doesn’t ask what the owner’s done to put it in such bad shape, but he assumes the worst – and he spends most of the day working on it, occasionally leaving it alone to help Bobby with another car or truck, or else just making sure the garage is all in working order. There’s something soothing about being buried elbow-deep inside the guts of a car. Cars aren’t like people. If a car fails, there’s almost always a reason behind it – maybe it needs gas, or an oil change, or maybe the brakes have worn out. Cars don’t fail just because they’re _cars_.

Cars don’t leave you when they don’t need you anymore. Cars are the things that _you_ need, and they’re always there. Always.

Dean bruises his elbow on the car’s fender fifteen minutes before he clocks out, and he drives back to his apartment in a haze of pain and anxiety. He purposefully thinks about Sam, and what Sam is doing out in California, and whether or not he’ll let Dean meet Jessica. He thinks about Becky Rosen standing in the kitchen downstairs, smiling. He thinks about Andy, head wreathed in smoke. He thinks about everyone he knows.

Everyone, except for Castiel.

Dean falls asleep in his own bed that night, but his dreams are scattered and uneasy, and he doesn’t remember any of them.

~

Days pass. Castiel’s story doesn’t leave the news – every day there’s always at least one station reporting on it, about how the fingerprints have officially been confirmed to be Lucifer Angioli’s, about how the gun has been matched to the bullet they found in Castiel’s skull, about how a visit to the Angioli household turned up nothing but an indignant father and four confused brothers. The police will catch Lucifer Angioli soon, every news station reassures. Soon, but, in the meantime, lock your doors and windows every night, and don’t allow strangers into your house for any reason, and…

Dean listens to the stories with a mixture of fascination and sorrow. He goes to work every other day, and he works on the cars, and he answers questions on the website. More the latter than the former, sad to say, but it’s not something that he pays too much attention to. He’s just glad that he’s still able to leave the apartment at all.

On day six, he asks Bobby for the weekend off.

“I know I haven’t been working every day…”

“Boy, the only things I spend my money on are car parts and my mortgage. I can afford to hire you because I don’t waste my time and my cash on junk. So take the weekend off, but be here Monday morning, and every morning after that. You can’t keep on the way you’ve been, Dean. The world isn’t a kind place.”

“You’re sort of proving that wrong right now, Bobby.”

“Well, I ain’t the world, am I? Get some sleep. I’ll see you Monday.”

“Bright and early,” Dean says, and Bobby snorts once, and then hangs up. Dean flips his phone closed and drops it onto his nightstand, listening for…for something, _anything_ , beyond the silence of his apartment. He closes his eyes, thinking that, maybe…maybe that will help. He’s pretty sure that your other senses compensate when you lose your sight, or when you wear a blindfold. It’s the sort of thing Sam might have told him, just randomly, back when they were still living together. _Hey Dean, did you know_ …Yeah. He heard that a lot.

He misses it.

“Cas?” he whispers, and thinks he feels…maybe not freezing, but a little bit colder. “You there?”

There’s a long silence, but then, “I am here, Dean. I am always here,” and Dean feels like he could shout with joy.

“I thought you’d be gone by now.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah, moved on to the ether or whatever it is that…that soul-pieces do when they don’t have a reason to hang around anymore.”

“Dean…” He feels something – something like a hand – touch his shoulder, and then move down the curve of his side. A slow, ponderous motion that seems achingly familiar. Has Castiel done this before? No, he has, Dean is sure of it, but how many times?

“You do that a lot,” he says, unsure if the statement is right, but willing to risk it, because Dean is almost _positive_. Sure enough, the touch eases, and there’s a soft sound. Dean realizes, after a moment, that it’s the sound of someone clearing their throat, but without an actual throat to clear. The memory of a sound.

“I will stop.”

“You don’t have to.”

“If it bothers you…”

“It doesn’t. Promise.”

Slowly the touch returns, moving over his hip and lingering there. It’s cold, but not unpleasantly so.

“I will not leave unless I must,” Castiel says. “I am tied here, to this building. So long as it remains, I imagine I will have a difficult time of going anywhere.”

Dean swallows. “Isn’t it horrible, though? Having to stay here?”

“It is something that I have gotten used to. Truthfully, these past few months it has ceased to bother me. I accepted my fate, and then…and then you arrived. The burden of remaining here seemed lighter, after that.”

“I don’t usually, uh, think of myself as being particularly life-changing.”

“But you are. Every human being is. You give yourself too little credit, Dean.”

Dean hums thoughtfully, turning onto his back so that Castiel’s hand – whatever it is that constitutes his hand – drifts over his stomach. Despite the chill of Castiel being in the room with him, or as close to being in the room as he can possibly be, Dean still feels warm, and tired. He can feel his breathing beginning to slow. “You and my brother,” he mutters. “You both have too much faith in me.”

“You should consider that, if there are two people who believe in you so much, perhaps it is you who has too little faith in yourself.”

But Dean’s eyes are closed, and he’s warm, and his heart is steady as clockwork. He’s asleep before Castiel ever finishes his sentence.

He doesn’t sleep for long.

His clock is flashing _3:00 a.m._ at him when he opens his eyes again, something cold touching his face, a voice, distant, in his ear. “Wake up,” it’s saying, “Please wake up,” but it’s so soft, so far away…someone’s television? A radio? Dean rolls onto his side and tries to ignore it. Maybe the owner will turn it off soon.

“Wake up.”

“Fucking TV,” he mutters.

And then his alarm clock flies off the nightstand, smashing against the wall, startling him into wakefulness. Tiny plastic and metal parts scatter across the floor as he sits bolt upright, heart hammering in his chest. “ _Wake up_.”

“What the _fuck_?”

“Dean, you have to _go_.”

The first thing he notices is that it isn’t the sound of a television, or a radio. The voice is distant because it’s Castiel’s voice, faint but unmistakable. It sounds like he’s trying to talk through several layers of glass.

“Cas?”

“Dean, _please_.”

The second thing he notices is the smell of gasoline.

 _That_ wakes him up.

“What’s happening?”

“You do not need to know what’s happening,” Castiel says. “You only need to leave.”

Dean shoves the covers down, kicking them off and stumbling out of his bed. The smell is faintest in his bedroom, but as he moves out into the living room the smell gets stronger.

No – as he moves closer to the front door. The _hallway_.

Someone is moving in the hallway. The footsteps are too heavy to be Andy’s or Becky’s – Chuck’s? But what reason does the author have for being up here?

“Dean…”

“ _Shh_.” That smell. That awful, overpowering smell. Dean covers his nose and mouth with one hand as he moves closer to his front door, listening. Maybe he’s imagining, maybe…

There’s a loud _slam_ , out in the hallway, so loud that it seems to shake the walls, so loud that it causes Dean to feel as though his heart is going to leap right out of his chest. Another slam. Another. The sound of something ramming against a door. The sound of Andy, shouting from downstairs, “Keep it _down_!”

Silence. And then, one more _slam_ , and the sound of wood splintering.

“My brother,” Dean hears, just as he opens the door, and steps out into the hallway.

Something cold and wet washes over his bare feet – the smell of gasoline is nauseatingly strong. Dean looks down; some clear liquid is washing over his toes, soaking the floor.

At least now he knows where the gasoline smell is coming from.

His heart rate hasn’t slowed at all, and he feels like he’s about to puke, or pass out, or maybe both, because gasoline means fire, and fire means…

“Dean, I have told you several times already to _leave_.”

“I’m not leaving, Cas. I’m not letting that sick son of a bitch burn this place down. It’s all you have left.” _It’s all that’s keeping you here._

“Dean, go, tell the other tenants to go, but please…”

But Castiel’s voice is almost inaudible, now, and the door at the end of the hallway – the door to Castiel’s apartment – is hanging open. _Hanging_ , the hinges loose and the wood around the lock splintered, like someone had used some blunt object, an axe or a hammer, to force the door open.

Inside, Dean can see a dark shadow – the figure of a man – and, as he walks closer, his feet skidding through the thick puddles of gasoline littering the floor, he begins to hear a voice. Not Castiel’s voice, but so, so similar – the same tone, the same depth.

Castiel’s voice never sounded so _off_ , though. So wrong.

“…your fault,” he hears, as he pushes the ruined door aside and steps into the empty apartment. He leaves a trail of gasoline in the dust as he walks. His breathing is harsh. Too fast. Everything is too fast, and if he makes the mistake of glancing to the right or the left he sees, out of the corner of his eye, what the gasoline might become: flames, five feet, ten feet tall, consuming everything in their path, no longer a potential fire but a blazing inferno. It will consume the apartment and him, and there won’t even be any bones left for Sam to mourn.

“All of this,” the figure is saying; he’s kneeling on the floor, next to a puddle of gasoline. An empty canister is lying next to him, and Dean can see Castiel standing by the window, watching. He looks sad. The whole room smells rankly of gas. “All of this didn’t have to happen, but _you_ had to be…different. A pervert. A _sinner_. I’ve only ever done our Father’s work, Castiel. Please understand. When you chose this life for yourself, you must have known that I would hear your cry for help. That I would come and put an end to your suffering.”

“Hey, _asshole_.”

The kneeling figure freezes, and then, slowly, shifts, until Dean is confronted, finally, _finally_ , with the man in the Polaroid, the man on the news station, the man with the blonde hair and the blue eyes. The man with the gun and the gasoline.

Lucifer.

“I see your taint lingers even after death,” Lucifer murmurs. “It has gone on to infect others. I’m sorry, brother, that I didn’t put an end to this fast enough.” His hand strays towards the pocket of his jeans, and Dean takes a lurching step forward, holding up his hands. _Like this’ll help,_ he thinks, but he does it anyways.

“Look,” Dean says, “Lucifer, right? Just…whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t. You’re sick. Just let me call the police, and you’ll get help. Cas...”

“I am _nothing_ like my brother.”

Dean’s breath catches in his throat as Lucifer pulls his hand from his pocket.

He’s holding a lighter. One of those new ones, the ones where all you have to do is push a button and hold it. No flint wheel. No wick. If Dean tried to wrest it away from him he would have, at most, maybe five seconds between the time Lucifer pressed the button and the time he touched the flame to the pool of gasoline beside him.

Dean can feel his vision narrowing, twisting into a long, dark tunnel. The only light at the end is the faint glow that Castiel emits, and all around him he feels…God, he feels too warm. He needs to get out. He needs to…

Castiel looks so _sad_.

“Dean,” he says, but Lucifer doesn’t seem to hear him. “Dean, you can go.”

He can. There’s nothing stopping him. As long as he can keep himself from passing out, he can make it to the door. He can run downstairs and bang on doors, he can shout, he can get everybody out of the building before the flames get too high, or too hot. He’ll be a hero.

He’ll be a hero, and Castiel will be gone. The building will go up in flames, and so will he.

“I can’t,” he says, and Lucifer smiles at him. It’s made all the worse by how _gentle_ his expression is, how serene.

“You see? My brother’s sickness has inspired madness in you. I am sorry that I allowed his memory to continue…it has obviously spread to you, and to the other residents of this building. Trust me. I will fix _everything_.”

Lucifer’s thumb moves; it shifts, and then presses down. Dean sees the light flare next to his skin, the sudden spark of flame. His breathing is harsh. He can hear his blood pounding in his ears. His chest aches with the force of his own heartbeat. He can still run. He can get out while Lucifer is distracted by his own brilliance, he still has time to go downstairs and warn everyone.

He sees Lucifer’s wrist twitch, and then his hand begin to lower.

Dean makes his decision.

He lunges forward, half certain that by the time he actually reaches Lucifer the whole room will have gone up, the fire following the trails of gasoline to the walls and, eventually to the ceiling. Half certain, but, of course, Dean’s senses are simultaneously heightened and obscured by his fear – every second seems like an hour, but only when it’s him that’s moving. He feels as though he’s watching Lucifer bring his hand down, and the lighter with it, in real time, while Dean is stuck a few seconds behind. He’ll never make it. Not in time. He can’t.

But gravity is not hindered by fear, and where Dean’s feet stumble, his own weight picks up. He smashes into Lucifer with his left shoulder, prompting a pained grunt from the man, and they both go skidding across the floor. Gasoline covers them, a thin film of flammability. Lucifer makes a sound like an angry cat, something like a hiss, or a scream.

His arm flails. The lighter falls. Dean doesn’t see it, but he hears the click of the plastic against the floorboards. He sees, over Lucifer’s shoulder, Castiel’s expression go from sad to horrified.

He feels the sudden heat of the flames as the gasoline ignites.

“Your earthly suffering will end,” Lucifer murmurs. “This place will be cleansed by the fires of God.”

“You didn’t really think this plan through, did you?” Dean asks, and Lucifer throws back his head and laughs, the sort of soft, pleased laugh you might hear while walking through a coffee shop. Not a laugh you’d hear from a fire-starting lunatic. Dean doesn’t want to hear it – Christ, it’s making his head hurt, even more than the thought of the flames spreading, and…

And Lucifer keeps _laughing_ , so Dean, grimacing, rams Lucifer’s head against the ground, once, twice, again and again, until he loses count, until the laughing finally, _finally_ stops, and Lucifer’s blood is covering Dean’s hands and they are surrounded – literally surrounded – by fire.

“ _Cas_!” He lets go of Lucifer, scrambling to his knees and glancing around, then immediately wishing he hadn’t. The flames are everywhere, the wallpaper is cracking and peeling from the heat, the floor is a maze of fire, the walls are blackening. Dean’s vision blurs, and he doubles over, clutching his stomach as he retches. He feels ashamed of his inability to control himself but, more than that, he feels afraid. Fire was the untamable beast that took his mother, and then, years later, took his father, as well. Fire can’t be controlled and it can’t be stopped. Their house had burned almost to the ground. His father’s car had been nothing but a smoldering wreck.

Fire is licking at Castiel’s feet as he stands there, by the window, gazing out over the city.

“Cas,” Dean says again, and drags the back of his hand across his mouth. Everything hurts, but he isn’t sure if that’s a reaction to the fire, somehow, or a reaction to tackling Lucifer. “Castiel, c’mon, you’ve got to…”

“There is nothing I or anyone else can do,” Castiel murmurs. He turns to look at Dean, his expression serene. “You have my brother. Take him and the other tenants away from this place. If he is beyond help, then see that he is punished for his crimes. You are a witness now, Dean.”

Something overhead cracks – the ceiling, maybe, something wooden splintering under the heat. Dean grabs Lucifer’s arm, slinging it over his shoulder. He’s dead weight, but still breathing. “You said that this place was keeping you here.”

“I know what I feel.”

“Then…then attach yourself to something else! My phone or something! Come on, Cas, we don’t have time for this!”

Castiel smiles sadly. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why the fuck not?!”

Castiel doesn’t answer; Dean hauls Lucifer to his feet, embers and ash falling down around them. His vision blurs again, but he closes his eyes and counts to ten, trying to ignore the sound of creaking wood and crackling fire. The smell of smoke. He can hear someone downstairs beginning to shout. A man’s voice. Andy?

When he opens his eyes again, Castiel is standing right in front of him. His hand is extended, touching Dean’s cheek. He’s smiling.

“Dean,” he says urgently. “Do you believe in second chances?” Dean swallows. “Do you believe that good people are rewarded after they die?”

“I want to,” Dean whispers. Lucifer groans against his shoulder, head flopping ineffectually to one side. “I do. I do, Cas.”

Castiel leans forward. His lips brush across Dean’s, a touch that is made of light and cold, not pressure. “Then that is all I need to know,” he whispers.

Dean stares at him for what seems like a long time. Chunks of burning wood fall down around them; the shouting from downstairs has turned into screaming, both male and female. He hears footsteps pounding up the stairs. Someone yelling – _Dean! Dean!_ – and then silence.

Lucifer groans again, and Dean realizes that the decision he made encompasses _everything_. Not just Lucifer, but Castiel, and this building, and where he’ll go next. He’s already made his choice, and now he has to live with it.

“I don’t want to go,” he says, and Castiel just _looks_ at him.

“You will find me, when the time is right,” he says, and then he turns to face the window. He doesn’t move.

Dean goes.

He squints his eyes against the brightness of the flames, carefully skirting around fallen pieces of ceiling and drifting embers, hauling Lucifer along (and Jesus _fuck_ , but how does Castiel have a brother who’s this _big_?), at times letting him drag, mostly, against the floor. The fire has spread to the hallway; Dean closes his eyes and pushes through, choking on the smoke as he navigates (more by instinct and feel than by sight) the burning trails of gasoline.

“Dean! Thank God, man!”

It’s Andy’s voice. Dean dares to open one of his eyes a crack, but almost immediately winces and has to close it again.

“Get this guy outside,” he says.

“Come on, we’ve got to…”

“I said get this guy _outside_!”

“Jesus! All right, fine. You okay? Dean, we’ve gotta get out of here.”

The weight of Lucifer’s arm around his shoulders lifts, and Andy grunts his displeasure at being forced to bear this new burden. However, it gives Dean the chance to lean against the nearest, non-burning wall. His throat is full of bile. He leans over, retching again and again, but bringing nothing up.

“Christ! Look, the fire department is on its way, we just need to get you out of the building. I can’t do this by myself, Dean. _Please_ , man, this is…this is so far beyond me, you have no fucking idea.”

Dean tries to open his eye again, wiping at his mouth with his hand. All the retching, all the panicking, it’s all made him feel so _tired_. He just wants to…

Castiel’s apartment is engulfed in flames. Dean can’t even see past the front door – does fire actually spread that fast? He turns his head away, heart pouncing, only to come face to face with Andy, staring at him. He doesn’t have Lucifer with him.

“Andy?” Dean says. “Where’s the guy?”

“Chuck got him, man. Brought him outside. I came back for you.”

“I’m fine.”

Andy snorts, then grabs Dean’s arm and slings it over his shoulder. Dean feels a weird sense of recognition – didn’t he just do this with Lucifer a few minutes ago?

“Did I fall asleep?” he asks. He feels groggy; Andy’s only response is to laugh. It’s a laugh that’s tinged with hysteria.

“I don’t know. _I don’t know_.” Dean’s feet stumble against the floor. The fire rages around them. “Move your feet, Dean. _Move_.”

 _Dean, you have to go._

Dean glances down at his feet. Haltingly, he begins to place one in front of the other, again, again, until they reach the stairs. Andy has to help him with those, but, slowly, they make their way around the fire, and then, eventually, out into the cold darkness of the world just before dawn.

~

It seemed like every news station ran a story on the fire at Gallagher Apartments. Dean had refused to say anything about what happened to the firemen on the scene, and no one else had any idea of what went on in Castiel Angioli’s old apartment. The only thing Dean had said, at the time, was that the firemen needed to take the unconscious blonde man to the police. No, not the hospital – the police. Why? Because he was an asshole, that was why. Because he was sick. Because he needed help.

Then he had gone to a hotel, still smelling like smoke, and gasoline, and fear. And then, the next day, Bobby had shown up. So Dean had gone to stay with him for a while.

The truth got out eventually, though. That’s usually how it goes. Reporters had flooded Bobby’s store, camping out on the sidewalk outside his house. Dean Winchester. They wanted to talk to Dean Winchester. The man who caught a murderer.

Dean had huddled in Bobby’s spare room, hidden behind the floor to ceiling stacks of books and newspapers, waiting it out. Eventually, he’d thought, the reporters would go away. They would find some other story to cover. They would leave him alone.

The reality of it was that the reporters didn’t leave until Andy showed up. Andy, who had agreed to do a fifteen-minute interview with whatever station paid him the most, because he knew a bit more of what had happened than anyone else. He’d gone back in, after all. He’d seen some of it.

(Dean sees the story being replayed weeks later, full of pictures of the ruined apartment building, nothing left of it but ash. He goes back there, at some point, although he isn’t sure when, in order to stand amongst the charred wreckage. He remembers tilting his head and listening, but hearing nothing but the sound of traffic, and people, and the wind.)

At some point, Bobby had told him that he couldn’t remain in hiding for ever. At some point, Sam had called him, asking him what the hell happened, someone had sent him an email saying that his brother had been in a fire, _Dean, please talk to me_. At some point, Dean had received a letter from the Angioli family, expressing their thanks for his apprehension of their sick brother.

At some point, Dean had read about the Lucifer Angioli trial in the news. Convicted of first degree murder. Life in prison. He had never once tried to plead insanity; he had insisted, right until the very end, that not only was he sane, but he was doing the right thing.

At some point, Dean must have remembered Castiel’s face as the fire licked at the walls and burnt away the ceiling. Castiel’s expression, sad but hopeful. Saying that Dean’s faith in him, in his goodness, was the only thing he would need. Castiel had never asked Dean to be something he wasn’t. Castiel had never asked him to change. Castiel had just…accepted him.

And so, at some point, Dean must have looked up local psychiatrists.

At some point, he must have chosen one.

~

Dean’s new apartment is small, but not quite as small as the last one. He has his own kitchen, and his own bathroom. His neighbors are quiet, but most days he can hear the sound of music drifting through the walls, or people talking, or laughing. The woman who lives across the hall owns a small dog; he can hear it barking, sometimes.

His kitchen has a stove, and an oven. Dean still doesn’t like using them if he doesn’t have to, but he’s getting better about it. Most days he can convince himself that nothing is going to happen, other than that his fish sticks will be a little bit crispier, or his pizza crust a little bit firmer. He owes a lot of this to repeated calls from Sam, telling him that tonight he’s going to make pizza rolls in the oven, and if Dean doesn’t Sam will be able to tell, and he’ll call Doctor Henricksen, see if he doesn’t.

Dean owes a lot to Doctor Henricksen, too. Sometimes what you need is a kick in the ass, and Henricksen is the kind of guy who doesn’t take any bullshit from his patients. So, Dean Winchester is terrified of fire? Then let’s give him a picture of a lit match, and, after that, a picture of a lighter. A picture of a fireplace, surrounded by happy-looking children and Christmas presents (Dean has to put the picture down, his hands shaking, his head hurting). A picture of a rocket launching. A forest fire. The next week, how about bringing in a box of matches? Henricksen holds them up, urges Dean to touch them. Dean manages for almost a whole minute. The next day, almost a minute and a half. It’s called immersion therapy, and it’s a long, painful process. It can take years in order to become truly effective. Not only that, it takes _money_. Money that Dean doesn’t necessarily have.

Money that Henricksen never once asks for. Dean visits him three times a week, and he only ever asks Dean for his insurance information once, and then after that? Nothing.

Dean gets a letter in the mail – a real fancy one – the day after he manages to hold a lit lighter for almost ten minutes. The header reads: “Pazzi & Adler, Attorneys at Law”. It lists an address that Dean isn’t familiar with.

The letter itself only says one thing: _Thank you_.

Dean keeps it in his nightstand, and pulls it out when he needs a boost of confidence in order to get the oven started.

He goes to therapy. He tells Sam that he hates it, and, on some level, he does – but he’s also grateful that it’s allowing him to work longer hours, it’s allowing him to eat meals that have been cooked in an oven instead of a microwave, it’s letting him be, on at least some level, _happy_. Henricksen teaches him a breathing exercise – he calls it “deep breathing”. It’s the sort of breathing that yoga instructors do, and now it’s the sort of breathing that Dean does when he feels as though his vision is about to blur, when his heart starts pounding, when he feels anxious and nervous and scared. Not that he ever says that he’s scared, but still.

“You should get out some,” Henricksen tells him. It’s the same thing that Bobby’s been telling him, the same thing that _Sam’s_ been telling him. “Meet some new people. Your social circle is fairly small, from what you’ve told me.”

“I’m not really a people person.”

Henricksen puts down his pen and stares at Dean. “Excuse me?”

Dean shifts uncomfortably. “I said that I’m not…”

“I _know_ you did not just lie to me. Your brother tells me that you used to be quite the pool shark. You don’t hustle people without being a people person, Dean.”

“ _Used_ to be,” Dean mutters. “Before Sam left.”

“What’s holding you back? You can’t build the rest of your life around your brother’s absence. Go out, get a drink, maybe meet someone nice. Take them home, or don’t take them home, just go _out_.”

Dean bites his lip. “I…”

 _You will find me, when the time is right._

“I can’t?”

“And why not?”

“Because I’m waiting for someone.”

“Someone…?”

“Yeah. He said that I’d find him, eventually. I don’t want to…” Dean shakes his head, unable to articulate it without sounding like a romantic imbecile. He wants to _wait_. As stupid as that sounds…he just can’t bring himself to do what Henricksen is suggesting. He doesn’t want to go out and pick up some attractive person.

He wants to go out and pick up _Castiel_. Except Castiel is gone.

“Have you considered,” Henricksen says, “the idea that maybe this person you’re looking for can’t be found just be going to and from work every day? At least some part of ‘finding’ someone involves searching, you know.”

“But what if I never find them?”

“Then at least you’ll have tried.”

Dean doesn’t say anything more during that visit, not beyond a polite “Good bye”, but he does go home and think about it.

He thinks about it for a week. It’s already been three months since Castiel…since the fire, so what’s another week going to hurt? In the end, he does something he told himself, three months ago, that he wouldn’t do: he calls Andy. He calls Andy, and, in between excited babbling about the book deal Andy’s gotten (not just about the fire, but about his life, being adopted, his twin brother, _everything_ ), Dean asks him if there’s a place near his new apartment that serves good coffee.

Andy directs him towards a tiny, family-owned place just two blocks away, and, on Tuesday, after work, Dean walks there, his hands shoved down into the pockets of his jacket as the wind whips around his face. It’ll be Christmas, soon – within the next week, actually – and people are rushing around carrying bags, and boxes, and they’re all in varying stages of happiness or anxiety. Dean skirts around a woman carrying a giant stuffed panda, and then steps into the warmth of the coffee shop that Andy had directed him to.

The whole place smells like baking: cinnamon buns, sweet cakes, cookies, brownies, Danishes and donuts. Under the smell of sugar and spices, the smell of coffee lingers, ingrained into the very walls, making the room feel small, and warm, and close. Dean steps up to the nearly empty counter and orders a cup of coffee, black.

“Sugar and cream are over there, if you like to make it yourself,” the guy at the register tells him. It’s the sort of approach that Dean wishes more people would take when it comes to coffee. He doesn’t want some other person pouring his sugar for him.

He pays for his cup of coffee, and then carries it over to the weird little island in the middle of the room. It’s stocked with stirrers, coffee lids, napkins, spoons, forks, as well as a few kinds of cream, both flavored and non, two kinds of sugar (what the fuck is sugar in the _raw_?), milk, whipped cream…Dean sticks with what he knows, and reaches for the regular sugar and a stirrer.

He almost drops his cup when he turns slightly, and sees the man sitting at the table by the window.

He’s got short, dark hair – not _as_ short, maybe. It’s the sort of hair that makes you think the person’s been meaning to go and get it cut, it’s just that they haven’t had the time. He’s got long, elegant fingers, curled around a cup of coffee – or maybe it’s tea – that he raises, every so often, to his mouth, but he never ends up taking a sip. He always sets it back down at the last minute. He’s got an angular face, and dark stubble, and he’s wearing a beige trench coat.

Before Dean even knows what he’s doing, he’s barely three feet away from the guy, heart thumping, rabbit-fast, in his chest. He doesn’t know where his coffee is, but he suspects he left it back on the island, amongst the crumpled, empty packets of sugar, and the little containers of cream and milk.

He is breathing so, _so_ hard. He forces himself to stop, to take a deep breath, to hold it and then to let it out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Deep breathing.

The guy turns to look at him.

His eyes are so blue.

“Can I help you?”

His voice is the right voice. Maybe it’s a little bit softer, a little less reserved, but it’s so achingly familiar that it makes something in Dean’s chest clench up like it’s dying.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Dean clears his throat.

“This might sound weird, but…do I know you?”

The guy _smiles_. It’s a familiar smile, not as sad, not as solemn, but it’s his. Maybe this guy is a little bit taller, or a little bit broader in the shoulder, or a little bit _so many things_ , but in every other way he is…

He just _is_.

“I don’t think so.” But the guy is squinting, looking first at Dean’s face, and then at his shoulders, at his hands. “Huh. Weird. Déjà vu.”

“I know what you mean.” Dean swallows. He should go. He should go back to get his coffee, and then he should leave. People don’t tend to like it when complete strangers come up to you in coffee shops and accost you. Dean might be a bit out of the social scene, but even he knows that that still holds true.

Instead of doing the sensible thing, though, he sticks out his hand.

“I’m Dean Winchester.” The guy looks up at him, eyebrows raised, expression amused. Slowly, he uncurls his fingers from around his coffee cup, and he reaches out, and their fingers touch.

“James Novak,” he says, and Dean feels a shiver of recognition run through him, something bone-deep and electric. The guy’s eyebrows rise even further. “Jimmy is fine. Would you…like to sit down?”

Dean freezes.

 _Do you believe in second chances?_

I do. I do, Cas.

Breathe in.

Dean pulls out the chair opposite Jimmy and sits down.

Breathe out.

“I have another weird question,” he says.

“Shoot.”

“Do you believe in second chances?”

Jimmy pauses, his cup lifted halfway to his mouth. Steam wafts around his face. Dean can see, now that he’s closer, that Jimmy is drinking tea, not coffee.

“I believe that good people get rewarded,” he says. He presses his lips to the rim of his cup. He takes a sip.

Dean says, “Let me buy you a donut?”

Jimmy smiles at him, and nods.


End file.
